


City Lights

by Anonymous



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - College/University, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, NHEV, No Happy Ending Fest, Possessive Behavior, Unhealthy Relationships, Verbal Abuse, Violence, assault and battery, implied infidelity, some slut shaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:42:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 61,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29243769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “Tell me something, Chanyeol.”“What?”“Would you still be doing what you’re doing, if you could do anything you wanted?”
Relationships: Byun Baekhyun/Park Chanyeol
Comments: 14
Kudos: 38
Collections: No Happy Ending Fest - 2020





	City Lights

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt #:** Self-prompt  
>  **Prompt:** "I know I have the right  
> To spend your precious time"
> 
> &
> 
> "When I whisper love into your ears  
> I want your once indifferent eyes  
> To tell me you love me too"  
>  **Pairing/Main character(s):** Baekhyun/Chanyeol  
>  **Side Characters(if any):** Chen, D.O.  
>  **Word Count:** 61,310  
>  **Rating:** Mature  
>  **Warning(s)/Additional Tag(s):** Unhealthy relationships, Abusive relationships, Possessive behaviour, Violence, Verbal abuse, Implied/referenced drug use, Implied infidelity, Some slut shaming  
>  **Author's note:** English translated lyrics of UN Village (the verses at the beginning and end..the prompts, actually) taken from colorcodedlyrics, and title taken from Baekhyun's first solo album :"D
> 
> (I don't have a playlist for this but if you're curious, the only songs I listened to heavily for the past few months were UN Village, EGOIST's Fallen and Taemin's Black Rose which I think captures the mood of this fic well.)

_I know I have the right  
_ _To spend your precious time  
_ _I know that, I know that, I know_

His eyes kept straying to the man at the back.

He couldn’t help it.

He knew that he should have been paying attention to what was on the board, to the example that the professor was going through. The musty room was filled with the sound of pen scratching paper, of highlighters gliding across printed words and tablet pen tap dancing across lighted screens. His own mechanical pencil weighed heavily in his palm, a burden that grew the longer that his eyes drifted away from the screen, to the back of the room.

But he couldn’t help it. There was something about the man that demanded his attention.

“Chanyeol,” his friend hissed in his ear. Chanyeol turned around sharply, blinking the haze away from his eyes. He pulled his chin away from his wrist as he unfolded himself, arms spreading out and body turning to face front again.

He stared back at his friend blankly. The jackhammer beat of his heart sent blood rushing through his veins, giving him a flushed look. It looked like shame. Shame of being caught doing something he shouldn’t have been.

“What?” Chanyeol asked.

His friend gave him a dirty look as he looked over his shoulder, to where Chanyeol had been staring not a minute ago. When his friend turned back, his displeasure had deepened, visible in the crease between his brows and the lines that bracketed his mouth.

“I’m not gonna let you copy my notes if you don’t even try to pay attention at least.”

While his friend turned back to the board, scribbling down the next few equations that the professor had moved on to, Chanyeol looked back again. To the man with his arms hooked over the back of the chair, one hand flicking open his cigarette box and then closing it with the same finger.

To the man whose loose jeans ironically seemed to emphasise his delicate figure, whose loose white crew neck shirt under his plaid shirt felt skin tight but left much to the imagination. To the man whose hair, messed up by carding through it with his own slender fingers, framed his sharp jawline under the harsh white light of the lecture theatre. To the man who was without a piece of paper or stationery on the table in front of him, who looked more like a tourist in the classroom, of an observer watching an experiment happening from afar.

To the man whose eyes darted to Chanyeol’s. For a split second, the man’s gaze pierced him like a shotgun bullet, like a spark that blazed a fresh trail of gasoline all the way to Chanyeol’s eyes, to an inevitable explosion that startled Chanyeol out of the moment.

Chanyeol turned away like he’d been burned by the eye contact. He repositioned up his mechanical pencil, feeling jittery and restless. For the next few minutes, he let himself copy the numbers on the screen, the words mumbled by his aged professor.

And then after that, he snuck another glance back at the man, looking forward with a placid look on his face. Chanyeol knew that he should really have been focusing on the lesson. His friend would get upset with him again.

But he couldn’t help it.

“I’m sorry,” Chanyeol said, widening his strides to catch up with his friend. His friend didn’t look back and he didn’t slow down his pace either. “I’m sorry, just— slow down, Kyungsoo. Wait up.”

Kyungsoo could be a fast walker when he wanted to. Years of practice had made him an expert at putting distance between him and Chanyeol’s long legs.

Kyungsoo shot him a withering look. “I told you to stop daydreaming and—” Kyungsoo stopped abruptly in the hallway, just in time for Chanyeol to scramble forward. Throngs of students walked by them, some shoulders bumping into Chanyeol’s arms. The hallway echoed with shrill laughter and the white noise of mindless conversation. Kyungsoo and Chanyeol stood off to the side, just in front of the locked utilities room, bodies turned towards each other and away from the faceless bodies of their schoolmates.

Kyungsoo waved his hands in frustration, trying to find the words to express the depth of his unhappiness. Eventually, he huffed angrily as he narrowed his eyes at Chanyeol. “Why the hell were you even looking at Byun Baekhyun, anyway?”

Chanyeol shrugged. “I don’t know,” he confessed honestly. He gripped onto the strap of his sling bag, looking at the cracked tiles under his shoes. “I was just distracted today or something.”

Kyungsoo’s eyes narrowed further as he seized Chanyeol up for a long second, crossing his arms in front of him.

“Honest.” Chanyeol added.

Kyungsoo’s glare lingered for another second before it faded away, letting his disappointment resurface. “Well,” he said with a hint of irritation still present in his voice, “Don’t do it again, okay? You shouldn’t even be staring at other people in class, much less Byun Baekhyun.”

“Okay.”

“Seriously, Chanyeol. Stop staring at him. He’s not good news, and you shouldn’t be trying to attract any of his attention to yourself.”

“Okay, Kyungsoo.”

“I mean it.”

“I know you do,” Chanyeol sighed. His shoulders slouched. “I mean it too, Kyungsoo. I’m sorry. I was just distracted today, that’s all.”

“You’re such an idiot. I told you that you were going to need that coffee earlier, didn’t I?”

“Yeah.” Chanyeol said softly, “You did.”

“We’re getting that cup of coffee next week.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

“And you’re not going to ditch me in Econometrics two while you stare at Byun Baekhyun.”

Chanyeol hesitated for a brief moment, “Yeah, okay.”

Kyungsoo looked sceptical, but he said nothing about his doubts. “Right,” he said, wrapping his arms around his books more tightly. Most of the students in the hallway had cleared by now, leaving them alone with a few stragglers looking at their phones. Kyungsoo stepped out of their corner, tilting his head towards the exit. “Just for that, coffee’s on you today.”

When Chanyeol promised Kyungsoo that he wouldn’t stare at Baekhyun anymore, he meant it. He would keep his word. He was a man of his word, if nothing else.

But memory was a traitor. It dredged back the things that people wanted most to avoid thinking about, brought it to the forefront of their thoughts. It filled up the empty spaces with echoes of those moments, with flashes of whispers that repeated like a broken recorder.

Chanyeol was a spectator, and his memory was a new release film.

He wasn’t breaking his promise to Kyungsoo. He wasn’t looking at Baekhyun anymore. Not for the next lecture, and then the next.

He was a man of his word, if nothing else.

Chanyeol leaned back into the seat and watched the easy way Baekhyun’s fingers lifted the thin paper material of the cigarette box, letting it breathe just before hammering it back into place with the back of his finger. A soft _click, click, click_ in the silence between his professor’s words.

But he wasn’t breaking his promise to Kyungsoo. All he was was a spectator. A face in the empty crowd with the film rolling, black and white images splattered across a screen much too big to be justified by the single audience. A new release with no one to appreciate its beauty except for Chanyeol.

The film cut off at the end. Lights came on, and Chanyeol stayed in his seat. Mesmerised.

Of a cigarette box that was beaten in on the sides, of a white shirt that caved in itself. Of a _click click click_ that resounded in his head, sounding both like the ticks of a film reel rolling and the cigarette box cover latching onto the flimsy paper lock of its body.

_Click. Click. Click._

There was no applause except for the one that Chanyeol’s feet made as he left the theatre. But that was okay. All there needed to be for a film’s beauty to be validated was a single enamoured viewer. Someone who would think well of it and let it slide out of his thoughts before it came back again, like a parasite. A worm that sits in its host.

But he didn't sneak a single glance backwards. Never dared to. Because he was a man of his word, if nothing else. He just thought of those ice cold eyes that pierced him every time he remembered that moment again.

Memory was a parasite.

Memory was a parasite that turned into a reality two weeks later.

The door swung open as the tutor slid her attendance sheet into an opaque file. She looked at the student who breezed into the room with both his hands tucked into the pockets of his skinny jeans. The fringe of his hair bounced along with his rhythmic strides that carried him to the back of the room where he sat at an unoccupied table. He slumped onto the seat with his legs spread and looked up expectantly with his chin bowed.

Everyone turned around discreetly. The ever curious audience who tried not to make their interest known.

“Baekhyun?” Kyungsoo whispered to Chanyeol, annoyed, “What’s _he_ doing here?”

Chanyeol shrugged. His eyes were glued to the man at the back, the one whose gaze flickered to meet Chanyeol’s for an electric instant.

Chanyeol tore his gaze away, turning back feeling unnerved. Kyungsoo’s own glare lingered just a beat longer before he turned back to the front as well.

The tutor cleared her throat, looking at the only row in her list without a tick next to the name. “Hello,” she said politely, albeit with a trace of awe, “are you a student of Econometrics two? Tutorial slot four?”

A contemplative look came over Baekhyun’s face for a moment. “Yeah,” he said casually, “sure.”

The tutor furrowed her brows as she looked back at the list. “Are you Byun Baekhyun?”

“I guess so.”

“He can’t even confirm his own name?” Kyungsoo sneered in Chanyeol’s ear. He rolled his eyes. Once again, Chanyeol shrugged.

“I don’t think it’s that he can’t,” Chanyeol replied, “I think it’s that he doesn’t care to.”

The tutor frowned down at her list, “You missed the previous two tutorial slots. Did you go for any other make-up slots?”

Baekhyun’s eyes slid upwards in thought before he shook his head once. The tutor’s frown deepened. She nodded before ticking against his name, two ticks less than everyone else in the classroom.

“Alright,” she said, “we have a few questions to go through for today. Any volunteers to present?”

A few hands went up.

“Maybe someone who hasn’t presented yet?” she added pointedly.

Fewer hands went down. Chanyeol glanced backwards again. Baekhyun’s hands remained in his pockets as he looked out of the window by his seat with a blank look on his face. Nothing about his demeanour indicated that he was aware of his surroundings, although Chanyeol knew that was wrong.

He knows. He just doesn’t care.

The tutor held her breath for a few more seconds before she exhaled deeply, shaking her head.

The rest of class passed as it would have if Baekhyun wasn’t there. Without a sound, without any other noticeable movement than the occasional turning of his face, a quick glimpse at the board before he looked out of the window once again, bored.

It was bewitching, how little he cared.

And it would have been as if Baekhyun were never there if he didn’t raise his hand, didn’t speak up at the end of the lesson.

Their mid-term group project was assigned to be done in pairs or groups of three. As it was, everyone had found partners to group with, and Kyungsoo was naturally Chanyeol’s only groupmate, as it had always been since they entered university together.

“Is there anyone without a group?” the tutor called out. She was checking through the list on her sheet again, counting the heads, counting the numbers. And it would all have been as if Baekhyun was never in class if he didn’t raise his hand, didn’t speak up.

“Me.”

The tutor’s face fell as she looked to the back. Everyone turned around, falling silent as they did.

“I— I’m sorry?” the tutor said nervously, “You don’t have a group yet?”

Baekhyun dropped his arm over the backrest of his chair. “Yeah,” he said, scanning the room. “I don’t.”

“Well, in that case, does anyone else not have a group yet?” she asked. Silence greeted her. “Does any pair want to take him in?”

The silence grew louder. Where everyone once looked towards Baekhyun, they were now looking away. It became taboo to look in his direction. It became taboo to look anywhere else but the floor.

The tutor worried her lip between her teeth. Distantly, Chanyeol wondered if her red lipstick would smear against her yellowish teeth, stained by months and years of coffee and tea.

The next thing he knew, the tutor caught his eye.

“Ah,” she said excitedly. She clapped her hands together, the sound echoed in the room like a clap of thunder. The sound of an epiphany, the sound of his promise to Kyungsoo breaking. “you’re a pair group, aren’t you?”

Chanyeol nodded stiffly.

“That’s great— I mean, would your group be willing to accept another member? Most of the other groups are in groups of three already.”

Chanyeol’s eyes met Kyungsoo’s.

“Actually—” Kyungsoo began.

“We’re okay,” Chanyeol said over Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo fell back in his seat, staring at Chanyeol with his jaw hanging. Chanyeol spared a second to apologise to Kyungsoo inwardly.

But he didn’t care enough to stop.

“We’re okay.” Chanyeol repeated again, more confidently. Kyungsoo’s shock twisted into a look of betrayal. The tutor looked between them, unsure.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Chanyeol mumbled. He looked over his shoulder, to the man who was already looking at him fixedly. “we’re okay with that.”

“I’m sorry, Kyungsoo.”

Chanyeol had barely caught up to his friend when Kyungsoo managed to get the key in the lock, twisting it viciously before pushing the door open with unnecessary ferocity. Chanyeol stumbled in after Kyungsoo, taking off his shoes with difficulty.

“Hey, look, I’m sorry. I know I messed up—”

“Yeah, Chanyeol.” Kyungsoo rounded on him, jabbing a finger into the space between Chanyeol’s ribs. “You let a freeloader into our group! And you _know_ how I feel about him—”

“Okay, yeah. But it was going to be someone’s group—”

“Better them than us!” Kyungsoo raised his voice. He took a step back as his nostrils flared, put his hands on his waist as he paced around the room. “You let Baekhyun freeload in our group, Chanyeol. And you already know that I don’t like him.”

“Well— I—” Chanyeol threw his arms out in frustration. “I’m sorry, Kyungsoo. I mean, I just couldn’t let him be left alone! Did you see the class? No one would’ve taken him—”

“And there’s a good reason for that!” Kyungsoo retorted snappishly, “Now he’s in our group. Thanks a lot for that.”

“I’m sorry—” Chanyeol repeated for what felt like the hundredth time, “I’m really, _really_ sorry, alright?”

“It’s not like your apology could make him _not_ be in our group.” Kyungsoo paced about the room angrily, frowning deeply in thought. When he stopped abruptly in front of the window, he marched right back to Chanyeol waving an accusing finger. “Do you even know what kind of person Baekhyun is?”

“What?” Chanyeol took a few steps back, trying to maintain the distance between them. Kyungsoo’s glare turned scornful.

“Baekhyun’s a bastard. Haven’t you heard? There are rumours, Chanyeol!”

“What rumours?”

“Rumours that he’s in a gang or some kind of cult. They say that his own parents abandoned him too. You know what they say? They say that his father _shuns_ him. What kind of parent could leave their child if their child was any good?”

“Are those rumours even real?” Chanyeol asked with a hint of impatience creeping into his voice. Kyungsoo looked back disapprovingly.

“Does it matter if they are?” Kyungsoo said, “What matters is what people think, Chanyeol. Associating with the wrong crowd will get us in trouble with everyone else.”

“Yeah, but that’s a lie, Kyungsoo. You don’t even look like you believe your own words.” Chanyeol said, running his hand through his hair. “Look— I’m really sorry, alright? I’m sorry that I screwed up but I don’t understand why you’re so angry about it. Why can’t you just tell me the truth?” he lowered his voice as he looked down, disheartened. “Don’t you think that I at least deserve to know something?”

Kyungsoo glared defiantly at Chanyeol for a long moment, long enough for the lock to rattle again before a man covered from head to toe stepped in, juggling a plastic bag and his laptop cover in one arm. He shook his head and let his unruly hair fall into place.

“Wow, you guys are back early.” the man laughed, closing the door. “I wasn’t expecting you guys back so soon but it’s good, because the hotteok stand down the street had no queue today and I decided to get one for each of us. I think it’s still warm so—” the man looked up in the midst of pulling his socks down with his toes. “Uh, wow. This is— this is awkward. What’s going on? Are you guys in the middle of an argument?”

“Yes.” Chanyeol said at the same time that Kyungsoo said, “No.”

The man looked between them helplessly.

“Uh,” the man said, unwinding his scarf from his neck, “So, uh. Does anybody wanna fill me in on why you’re fighting?”

Kyungsoo’s already narrowed eyes narrowed further, “Chanyeol invited Byun Baekhyun into our group. He invited a leech into our group.”

The man worked his eyebrows for a few seconds, throwing the scarf over his shoulder. “Wait,” he said, face frozen in realisation. “Do you mean the rich guy? Byun, right?”

“Yes.” they said in unison.

“Is it the Byun Baekhyun you told me is in a gang? Ooh, wait. Are we talking about the guy— Byun Baekhyun— right? The one who’s friends with Lay Zhang?”

“He knows _Lay Zhang_?”

“It doesn’t matter who he’s friends with, Jongdae! That’s not the point!”

Jongdae raised his eyebrows at Kyungsoo’s outburst, “Okay.. so what is?”

“The _point_ is that Chanyeol knew that I disliked Baekhyun, and he still let Baekhyun join our group!”

“Oh,” Jongdae said in understanding, nodding slowly, “Right. I see. Okay, yeah, I kind of get it now.” he paused, “Wait— why don’t you like him? I heard he’s pretty cool.”

Chanyeol turned to Kyungsoo with an expectant look on his face.

Kyungsoo’s eyes bounced between Jongdae and Chanyeol before he heaved a large sigh, as if the sigh alone could erase all the worries he carried in his heart. “I have a bad feeling about him.” Kyungsoo said with a sulk, “Call it an intuition.”

“An intuition?” Chanyeol parroted. “That’s why you’re being so hostile to Baekhyun? An _intuition?_ ”

Kyungsoo glared harder at Chanyeol. “Yeah. The same intuition that warned you against going to that party last year. You know, if it wasn’t for this _intuition,_ you might have gotten into trouble with the disciplinary board—”

Chanyeol sighed quietly. This was an old argument that Kyungsoo had used against him for the past year. It was getting tiring, but Kyungsoo was right. His intuitions were usually better than Chanyeol’s and Kyungsoo had single handedly steered him out of trouble more times than he would like to admit.

Chanyeol’s shoulders sagged defeatedly. “Yeah,” he mumbled, “I know.. I know, but—”

“I don’t expect you to understand it,” Kyungsoo interrupted firmly, “I can’t explain it myself. I can’t explain why I get such a bad feeling around Baekhyun, alright?” a pause. Kyungsoo rubbed his elbow, looking off to the side as his voice fell. “But I know this: he scares me. When I’m near him, I feel afraid. I don’t feel comfortable around him. Isn’t that enough reason not to want him in our group, where we have to work together?”

Jongdae looked to Chanyeol and shrugged. “He has a point, you know.”

Chanyeol swallowed thickly, biting his lower lip as he felt his pride die a miserable death in his guts. “I’m sorry, Kyungsoo. I’m— I’m really, really sorry. I messed up and— and it won’t happen again.” Chanyeol looked up, offering a hesitant smile. “I promise. I will ask you about things in the future, okay? I’m sorry about today.”

Kyungsoo’s downturned lips wavered as a contemplative look flashed across his face. He rubbed his chin for a moment, looking to Jongdae for a brief moment before he sighed, dropping his hand.

“Okay,” Kyungsoo said quietly, “I accept your apology.”

Immediately a weight was lifted off Chanyeol’s chest. He exhaled in a mix of relief and exhaustion, bringing his hand to his chest. Jongdae flashed Chanyeol a thumbs-up, waggling his brows.

“But I’m not working with him for our project.” Kyungsoo added quickly. His voice hardened when he said, “You’ll do it.”

It wasn’t until much later that Chanyeol realised Kyungsoo meant it as a form of punishment. Working with Byun Baekhyun. To do penance for his cardinal sin.

But Kyungsoo was wrong.

Chanyeol was marking down the date for the next showing.

Memory was a parasite. But fascination was something else.

They caught Baekhyun just before he was out of the ratty lecture theatre door. With a hand on the metal handle, Baekhyun turned back with a brow raised in question.

“We need to split up the work,” Kyungsoo said flatly.

“Oh,” Baekhyun said. He spun around and slipped his hands into the pockets of his leather pants, feet pointing outwards as he tilted his head sideways, his disinterested eyes went down the length of their bodies as they stood in silence.

Baekhyun looked at them like they were a nuisance. A protest in front of a building that he happened to be passing by, the wrong place at the wrong time. He looked at them as one would look at people they thought were stupid, a hinderance in the routine of their life that they would get around, before moving on with their life, business as usual.

They were a minor inconvenience, something you thought about for a second before you moved on with your day.

Sensing that Baekhyun wasn’t about to speak, Kyungsoo did. “We have two questions for the project. You can work with Chanyeol on one question.”

Beakhyun looked to the side, as if contemplating it. “Okay.” he nodded amicably. He looked to Chanyeol, still with that distant stare of distaste. “So will we be doing the second—”

“I will be doing question two.” Kyungsoo corrected. Baekhyun cocked his head the other direction, assessing Kyungsoo’s deeply furrowed brows with nonchalance. “Question two is longer and more tedious, so I will do it.” Kyungsoo explained.

An indecipherable smile slipped onto Baekhyun’s face as he maintained eye contact with Kyungsoo. Cold eyes poured into fiery ones.

“Okay,” Baekhyun said, completely casual. Undisturbed. Unoffended. His blasé attitude only seemed to add fuel to the fire in Kyungsoo’s eyes.

Kyungsoo clenched his fists around the straps of his bag. “Fine.” he said hotly.

“Fine.” Baekhyun replied airily.

Kyungsoo faced Chanyeol with a deep frown. “See you at home.” he muttered and then turned to pull the door open, shoulders brushing against Baekhyun’s, letting his footsteps echo in the empty hallway outside. Baekhyun waited for the door to slam shut before he released a breath of laughter, a humourless snort.

“See you at home.” Baekhyun repeated, “You hire nannies for friends now?”

“He’s my _friend,_ not my nanny. We live together.” Chanyeol scowled.

“So why doesn’t he treat you like one?”

“He does.”

“Okay.”

“He _does_.” Chanyeol insisted. Impatience seeped into his voice. The unaffected way that Baekhyun dismissed everything, the way that Baekhyun was looking at him, like the scum under his shoe. It irked him. It ran under his veins, something itching for a fight.

Impatience gave way to indignation.

“You know what?” Chanyeol said testily, “You don’t even know him. So don’t be a jerk and go making wrong assumptions about my friend.”

He wasn’t sure why it was so important for him to make his point, to justify that Kyungsoo wasn’t someone who looked after him, that he wasn’t someone who needed looking after. It just was. It just was in the same way gravity kept humans rooted to Earth, it just was in the way that humans couldn’t live without water.

It just was.

Baekhyun looked up at Chanyeol. Though his expression was as stoic as it had always been, his eyes held a spark that Chanyeol had never seen before. It twinkled in his dark eyes like a gem lost at sea, something once hidden away that had now been discovered.

It wasn’t amusement. It wasn’t approval. But it was something close to it, something that spoke of interest. It was catching sight of something in the protesting crowd that made them worth the second of attention. It was realising that there was something beneath the initial impression that was worth digging up.

Baekhyun smiled something peculiar. Halfway between a genuine smile and something condescending. “Alright,” Baekhyun said placatingly, “my bad.”

That was a surprise.

Baekhyun didn’t look like the type who would concede that it was his fault, but here they were.

“Yeah,” Chanyeol said. He blinked and leaned away, rubbing his wrist. “It was. You were being rude to me.”

“Alright. My bad.” Baekhyun said again.

“Yeah.” Chanyeol murmured, more to himself than to Baekhyun. Awkwardness crawled through his veins now that Baekhyun was apologising to him. Chanyeol felt like he was overreacting to something small, something that wasn’t even worth the conversation. He wondered if he should apologise for being upset at Baekhyun, as he usually did when he upset Kyungsoo. He wondered if Baekhyun would brush it off with his uninterested attitude, or if he would make fun of Chanyeol in one way or another.

Chanyeol decided against it.

He began to unsling his bag from his shoulders, rummaging through it for his file. “Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I’ve already done up most of the answers for question one.” Chanyeol pulled out a stack of papers from the file, neatly stapled lecture notes impeccably highlighted with scribbles on the side, the question paper and a sheet of paper with workings on them. “There’s just one question I’m not really sure of because—”

Baekhyun snatched the sheets of paper from Chanyeol. He hopped onto a nearby table and crossed his legs, holding the papers up to the cold light afforded by the otherwise barren room. His eyes looked through every question before they scanned Chanyeol’s workings, impassive eyes darting back to Chanyeol’s nervous ones every now and then.

When he was done, Baekhyun fixed his eyes on Chanyeol’s.

“Because..?” Baekhyun encouraged. Chanyeol’s mouth twisted into a small frown.

“It’s not in the notes. It wasn’t in the slides, and I don’t think that prof talked about it because if he had, I would’ve made a note about it—”

“He did.”

“.. What?”

“He did.” Baekhyun said. He put his hand down on his knee, crumpling the paper slightly where he held onto it. “You just weren’t paying attention.”

“That can’t be right.” Chanyeol shook his head, “If he did, I would’ve written it down. I haven’t, so he must not have—”

“Look,” Baekhyun said, unimpressed, “Say what you want, but I’m telling you now that he said it. You didn’t listen. No matter how you try to dispute it, those are the facts. Now, I’m going to tell you what he said. So _listen_.”

Chanyeol closed his mouth. His teeth made a soft _click_ as they locked, and Chanyeol wondered momentarily if Baekhyun could hear it as well. He edged closer to Baekhyun, hanging his head so that he didn’t have to see what expression Baekhyun was wearing as he waited for Chanyeol to move. As he watched Chanyeol fall silent in pliancy.

He wondered if Baekhyun was pleased.

“See,” Baekhyun said, “for this question, you’re looking at the violation of the endogeneity condition. Simply put, if you omit a variable, it will be absorbed into the error term. If the correlation between beta one and the error term isn’t zero, you will have a non-zero correlation. Follow?”

“Yes.”

“Look at the estimator for beta one.” Baekhyun pointed to the neon-yellow highlighted formula on Chanyeol’s lecture notes, “Beta one hat tends to the true estimate made of two parts. You have beta one, and then you have beta two multiplied by this term. Covariance is basically correlation multiplied by the standard deviation of both factors. If you have the direction of correlation, you have direction of covariance. Variance is always positive. Therefore, you only need to care about the direction of correlation.”

“Wait— how does that help you to find the direction of bias?”

“Shouldn’t that be obvious by now? Think about it. Use your brain a little. What’s the point of all these,” Baekhyun ruffled through the small pile of notes next to him, “if you’re not going to learn something from it? You’re a university student, not a transcriber.”

Chanyeol ignored Baekhyun’s jibe in favour of taking a closer look at the equation. “If the direction is positive, beta one hat is upward biased.” he said, still laced with some uncertainty, “Because beta one hat would be bigger than beta one actually is.”

“That’s right.”

“And if the direction is negative, beta one hat would be smaller than it actually is. It would be downward biased.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s it?” Chanyeol said with disbelief.

“That’s it.” Baekhyun confirmed.

Chanyeol suddenly felt a wave of embarrassment wash over him. Embarrassment of not being able to solve something so simple, embarrassment of being hand held by Baekhyun. The one with the pen, paper and highlighters was the one without the answers. The good student who was really good for very little.

Chanyeol wished he had a good excuse but he had none. So he bit the insides of his cheeks, trying to expel the desire of wanting to disappear. “Oh, um. Thank you.” he said stiffly.

“You’re welcome.”

“No, I mean— seriously. Thank you. That was..” Chanyeol glanced at Baekhyun, “you were a great help.”

Baekhyun shook his leg leisurely. “Not what you were expecting?”

Chanyeol sucked in his lower lip, fidgeting with the hem of his plain shirt. He briefly debated with himself if he should say something. What _would_ he say? That Baekhyun was right? That Chanyeol believed that Baekhyun would have nothing to contribute to their project? That he thought Baekhyun was a typical university delinquent? Someone who barely made it in and was hanging onto a simple passing grade by his fingernails?

Baekhyun broke the short bout of silence they had.

“I know your friend mustn’t have been very keen on having me in the team.”

“He wasn’t.” Chanyeol acknowledged.

“Hmm,” Baekhyun hummed, closing his eyes with a serene smile on his face. When he opened his eyes again, he looked straight at Chanyeol with a gaze stronger than the recoil of a rifle. “Well, it doesn’t matter to me.” Baekhyun stared at the tip of his boots, “I don’t care.”

“You don’t care?”

“I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re all stupid opinions formed by equally stupid people.”

Chanyeol looked up sharply, “Kyungsoo’s not stupid.”

“He is.” Baekhyun said calmly, “He’s both stupid and an asshole. Most people are only blessed with one attribute, but your friend possesses both. That’s a pretty lethal combination.”

“Why do you have to be so rude?” Chanyeol growled.

“I’m not being rude, I’m being straightforward. They’re two separate things.”

“No. You’re being rude _and_ straightforward. That’s a pretty lethal combination too.”

“Rude is how you react to my words. Words are just words. It’s you who thinks that they’re rude.”

“How is calling someone you don’t even know both stupid and an asshole merely being straightforward?”

“How is it not?” Baekhyun asked, “He’s an asshole to judge me based on things that he probably heard. He’s stupid to believe them.”

“And is he wrong? You’re not exactly mister manners yourself.”

“And is he wrong?” Baekhyun tittered mockingly, “Come on, you’re not _that_ stupid. But since you insist on acting like you are, I’ll help you with that. Here, I’ll even give you the answer: he’s not wrong. I _am_ an asshole, sure. I’m an asshole, I’m a douchebag, I’m whatever you want to call me. I’m all of them.”

Chanyeol gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. “Why’s that so funny? Why are you laughing?”

Baekhyun stopped laughing abruptly. His face straightened out into a blank canvas again, betraying nothing. As Baekhyun leaned back, the hands holding Chanyeol’s work curled in and crushed the middle of the paper. The crunch echoed in the otherwise silent room, and it lingered in the air long after the sound had faded away like the rotten smell of fear festering.

“Sometimes, I really pity you, Chanyeol. Your world is so black and white,” Baekhyun said plainly, “Is someone wrong? Are they right? Are they good? Are they bad? Everything is binary to you.”

“It’s not.”

“Sure it isn’t. That’s why you’re such a firm defender of your friend’s dignity.”

“I’m not.”

“You can’t stand the thought that your friend could be the bad guy too. He’s your friend which means he must be good. He can’t be stupid, he can’t be an asshole. You won’t even admit that to yourself.”

“There’s nothing to—”

“And I wonder,” Baekhyun continued, turning his face away towards the window half-covered by the blinders, “Why it looks like you’re trying to please this friend of yours like you’re afraid of offending him.”

“I’m not—”

“You should see the look on your face when he talks to you. It’s cute how you look like you’re headed for the guillotine.”

“I don’t—”

“And you know, I wonder..” Baekhyun tilted his head back just enough to look at Chanyeol from the corner of his eyes, “If the reason you try so hard to maintain your impression of him is really because you know what he truly is, and you hate that person.”

Chanyeol froze. And then he blinked.

“Excuse.. me?”

“You know who your friend really is and you hate him.” Baekhyun shrugged noncommittally. “That’s why you can’t stand it when people point out his behaviour. You don’t want to hear it.”

“That’s not true,” Chanyeol said loudly, flaring his nostrils. “It’s not true.”

“It’s not?”

“It isn’t!”

Baekhyun looked down as a pensive look crossed his face. After a moment of deliberation, he dismissed his thoughts with a shrug. “Okay, then.”

“Okay?” Chanyeol echoed incredulously.

“What else do you want me to say?” Baekhyun raised his hands palms up, tossing the paper in his hands into the air, letting them fall onto the table he sat on. Chanyeol watched as the paper fluttered down like an uneven weight, drilling through the air with the crumpled side down. When he looked back at Baekhyun, his brows were drawn together in a firm line.

“An apology would be nice.”

“Tough luck, you’re not getting any.”

“And what makes you feel justified in offending people like this without any apology? Do you— do you think you have a right to do this?”

“Of course I do,” Baekhyun said, “I have a right to say what I think, just as you have a right to say what you think, just as you have the right to punch me in the face and tell me what an asshole you think I am.”

“I don’t have the right to punch you. That's battery and assault. It’s against the law.” a pause, “And I don’t want to punch you.”

“Are you sure about that?” Baekhyun asked, ignoring the first part of Chanyeol’s reply.

Chanyeol hesitated for a heartbeat. “I’m sure.” he said feebly.

Baekhyun studied Chanyeol’s face for a moment that felt too long to be comfortable. There was a flicker of emotion in his impassive eyes that Chanyeol recognised as a subdued frustration, the look of resignation and disappointment that culminated in a frustration that someone had encountered too many times before.

“Okay then.” Baekhyun hopped off the table and dusted his hands.

“Okay then?” Baekhyun shrugged as he walked around Chanyeol fluidly, reaching for the metal handle of the door. Chanyeol followed his movement with his head, taking a step forward just as Baekhyun pulled the door open and held it open with a foot.

“Okay then,” Baekhyun said, looking over his shoulder, “I don’t care. It’s your choice.”

“What’s my choice?” Chanyeol asked, frustration seeping into his voice. He couldn’t help the overwhelming sense that something was slipping from him even as he was trying his best to hold onto it. He couldn’t help the sense of being left behind as he watched Baekhyun take a foot out of the door. “What are you talking about?”

“You know, Chanyeol,” Baekhyun said, looking down at his boots before he threw his head back in a tired sigh. “I think that the world would do better to be more honest with themselves.”

And then, Baekhyun flashed Chanyeol the most brilliant smile he’d ever seen. His eyes turned up into crescents, the light reflected in his eyes flickered like diamonds, a dimple appeared as his lips parted in a grin that rivaled the sun. In that moment, time was infinite, and Chanyeol was witnessing the birth of a new universe.

And as Baekhyun looked over his shoulder with his hair falling to the side as he tilted his head back, he said, “We don’t need to keep killing ourselves for other people’s benefit.”

Was it possible to die more than once?

Chanyeol didn’t know, but at that point he didn’t care either.

He was fascinated.

He was sitting in the theatre and watching a new scene in the film, something stealthily added after production. He was sitting in the middle of the empty theatre with his hands glued to the handrests, with the film reel rolling on and on and on and on.

Was it the scornful way that Baekhyun glazed over him, an inconsequential person with nothing to offer? Was it the hateful way that Baekhyun’s lips curved upwards into a cruel smile that Chanyeol couldn’t forget? Or was it the complete apathy that radiated from Baekhyun?

The newly edited film reel spinned on and on and on. Chanyeol was the only man in the non-existent crowd.

He was sitting in the theatre with eyes wide open and a loose jaw. His heart pounded away, his mind whirred into overdrive. But still, he sat in the theatre, watching Baekhyun sneer at him with hard eyes and the most brilliant smile he’d ever seen.

He should have been offended. He should have rebutted. He wasn’t, he didn’t.

He was fascinated.

Memory was a parasite. But fascination was something else.

Fascination was a parasite that doesn’t die easily.

Chanyeol was twirling his pen over his fingers, watching it cascade down his hand like water over a cliff. Next to him, Kyungsoo pulled back his chair, settling down with his eyes glued to their project results.

Chanyeol glanced at Kyungsoo’s miniscule frown. “What is it? We didn’t do well?”

Kyungsoo looked to Chanyeol for a moment, “Not really. That’s not it.”

“Then what is it?” Chanyeol craned his neck, looking at the big A scribbled hastily on the top right hand corner of their assignment. “We got an A? Isn’t that good?”

Kyungsoo sighed quietly, flipping over to the next page where their answer to question two was printed. Written in a doctor’s handwriting were the red words, “Time series may be serially correlated -> violates your assumption that errors are serially uncorrelated! Pls use Newey-West test to correct for heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation next time!”

“It slipped my mind,” Kyungsoo admitted sullenly.

It was probably the pout on Kyungsoo’s face, or it could have been the indignant way that Kyungsoo mumbled his words like a spoiled child that didn’t get his way. Or maybe it could have been both, because a niggling, soft voice emerged from the back of Chanyeol’s mind and whispered in his ear, giggling maliciously.

_He’s both stupid and an asshole._

Chanyeol froze.

“Are you angry at me?” Kyungsoo asked, noticing Chanyeol’s stillness. Chanyeol blinked away the sudden haze that clouded his thoughts, the sharp words that echoed in his head, the small voice that emerged, all unwelcomed.

“Oh,” Chanyeol said after a beat, “No. I’m not.”

There was a lack of conviction in his blank voice. Not even a hint of reassurance. Chanyeol blinked again, this time at the weird quality strangling his words. He cleared his throat and straightened his back. “I’m really happy that we got an A. I mean, that’s good! Really. It’s just a small mistake, that’s all. It’s not your fault.”

Kyungsoo hesitated, eyeing Chanyeol. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Chanyeol said, and smiled. It felt like he was stretching taffy.

If Kyungsoo noticed, he didn’t show it. His posture relaxed, an easy smile spreading across his lips. “Okay.” he said. Kyungsoo flipped the assignment over to the back of the first page. “Wow, you actually managed to figure out this one. Huh, where did you find the answer? Was it in the notes?”

“I didn’t.” Chanyeol said.

“Huh?”

“I didn’t— uh, find the answer. It’s not in the notes.”

“Then how’d you—”

“Baekhyun explained it to me.”

“Baekhyun?” Kyungsoo repeated in disbelief, turning around in his seat to look at the man sitting behind. Chanyeol followed suit, hooking his arm over the top of his chair.

As always, Baekhyun sat with his back resting fully against the backrest, hands in the pocket of his denim jacket as he stared out of the window next to him. A lock of golden-brown hair fell into his face, perched over the bridge of his nose like an accessory. His expression was perfectly tranquil, as if he were an empty shell waiting to be filled with something that would bring him to life.

Suddenly, his eyes moved to the side and stared back into Chanyeol’s own.

Chanyeol jumped in his chair as if he’d been struck by lightning. His knees bumped against Kyungsoo’s.

“Ow!” Kyungsoo hissed, “What’s wrong with you?”

Heart racing, Chanyeol pressed a warm palm against his chest. “I’m sorry.”

“Did something bite you? Why’d you jump all of a sudden?”

“I..” Chanyeol began, then thinking better of it, he said, “I don’t know. I just— I thought I felt something.”

Kyungsoo looked down at their legs under the table and found nothing besides stray hair and eraser dustings. “Well,” he said, unconvinced, “Whatever it was, it’s gone now.”

Chanyeol turned to look back at Baekhyun. Baekhyun was looking out of the window again, as if he’d never noticed in the first place. He was a marble sculpture to be ignored at the back, a work of art before its time.

“Yeah,” Chanyeol agreed hollowly, “It’s gone now.”

But Chanyeol couldn’t let it go.

He was only surprised that Baekhyun was letting it go.

Instead of saying hi to Chanyeol, instead of waving at Chanyeol in greeting or recognition, instead of even gracing Chanyeol with a glance of acknowledgement, Baekhyun did nothing. He strolled in through the back doors of the lecture theatre, casual as ever, and sat in the last row with one hand in the pocket of his skinny jeans and the other flicking open his cigarette box.

_Click._

Instead of saying a thank you to Chanyeol for printing out their assignment, for submitting it and notifying him of the result, Baekhyun said nothing. He looked up at Chanyeol expectantly and walked away with the gait of a man who knew he had everyone’s attention, who flaunted his confidence in the most understated way.

_Click._

Instead of being nicer to Chanyeol, instead of being more approachable to Chanyeol, Baekhyun remained as cold as ever. He continued watching the leaves outside the window of their tutorial room wilt before being swept away by the increasingly frigid wind, looking at the cloudy skies outside like it was always going to be more interesting than Chanyeol would ever be.

_Click._

Initially, he was only surprised that Baekhyun was letting it go. But then something else surprised him: his hurt.

Hurt that it was something so trivial and forgettable to Baekhyun. Hurt that he would always watch Baekhyun come and go, and he wasn’t even worth the second of attention. Hurt by his own unknown desire to be closer to Baekhyun.

He was someone too, after all. Even if he was only a face in the faceless crowd, even if he was the only person who kept coming back to the same film, the only person who spotted new additions to the film that had been released weeks ago.

He was someone too.

And then, as the leaves on the trees that lined the roads turned into yellow, as they shriveled up just a little bit more along the sidewalks and started to break into uneven pieces as they were crushed, Chanyeol noticed his hurt changing as well.

Finally, he was surprised by how his hurt had morphed into something hot and heavy, something that simmered beneath his skin and hammered in his head. A tightness that locked his jaws and made him take deeper breaths. A focus that shot through everything else into a constant _click click click_. The metronome of his thoughts, the song of Baekhyun’s cigarette box.

He was someone too, and Chanyeol wouldn’t let it go.

It was a blessing in disguise when Kyungsoo started sneezing the day before their lecture. A sneeze that grew into a bad migraine and eventually a fever that rendered him useless for anything besides sleeping.

Chanyeol sat on the edge of Kyungsoo’s bed, gently placing a cup of warm water on the bedside table.

“Do you want me to bring you to a doctor tomorrow morning?”

Kyungsoo shook his head weakly, “No. It’s fine.”

“Okay,” Chanyeol said, “Do you want me to look after you tomorrow? I can fix up some chicken—”

“No,” Kyungsoo sniffed miserably, reaching for the cup of warm water. Chanyeol helped him up slowly, waiting patiently as Kyungsoo took a long sip before coughing once. “It’s okay, I can take care of myself.”

Chanyeol didn’t doubt that, but it was still good to check if Kyungsoo wanted his company. His mother had raised him to be a good man.

“Are you sure? It’s not a problem.”

Kyungsoo nodded, smiling weakly at Chanyeol with hazy eyes. “It’s okay. You should go to lecture. Share your notes with me after class.”

Chanyeol smiled back at Kyungsoo. Of course he would. They were good friends. They shared everything with each other.

Or Chanyeol used to, anyway. Not that Kyungsoo would know. What Kyungsoo didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.

Chanyeol was hiding this for Kyungsoo’s own sake.

Chanyeol made a beeline towards Baekhyun the second that lecture ended, gathering all his belongings in his arms like armour he wore going to war.

Baekhyun had barely gotten out of his seat when Chanyeol cornered him. Baekhyun nodded casually, the edge of his lips curled upwards in a sardonic smile.

“Hey, doll.” he said in his lazy drawl. He pocketed his cigarettes, kicking the chair in. “Where’s your angry friend?”

“His name is Kyungsoo.” Chanyeol said briskly.

“That’s what I said.”

“Why do you hate him?” Chanyeol asked without preamble.

Baekhyun raised his brows slowly as amusement and disbelief sparkled in his eyes. He laughed, completely unoffended. “I don’t hate him,” Baekhyun said, shrugging nonchalantly. He slid his hands into the pockets of his ripped jeans, looking towards the exit of the lecture hall. “I hate him as much as he loves me.”

Chanyeol inhaled deeply, chewing on the inside of his lower lip. “Then why are you so hostile to us?”

“Us?”

“To Kyungsoo and I,” Chanyeol elaborated with thinly veiled anger and irritation, “We’re not just some strangers to you, you know. We did a project together, and we got an A on that—”

“We did a project together.” Baekhyun repeated flatly. He chuckled, glancing briefly at Chanyeol before he looked away again. “We were groupmates. Not fuck buddies, not friends, not _anything_.”

Chanyeol locked his jaw, looking down at his shoes. Baekhyun was right. Of course he was. Doesn’t mean that it didn’t hurt to hear it all the same.

“Look,” Baekhyun said. He rolled his shoulders, bored. “What do you want from me, Chanyeol? What did you come here for? Because I know you didn’t come here to talk about your friend, of all things.”

Chanyeol looked up timorously from under his messy bangs. He’d gotten so annoyed at Baekhyun that he had nearly forgotten the initial intention of finding him in the first place. Now, standing in front of Baekhyun, being coaxed into spilling what he really wanted to say, Chanyeol felt like a child being berated for some wrongdoing. Of course, he wasn’t a child anymore, and neither did he do anything wrong. But there was something about the way that Baekhyun stared him down that made him uneasy.

He was treading on thin ice, and his words were a weight that could shatter the stability of the ice beneath him.

He cleared his throat, choosing his words carefully. “I.. I wanted to thank you. For your help, I mean. On our project.”

Baekhyun tilted his chin up, looking down at Chanyeol with half-hooded eyelids. It’s strange, Chanyeol thought, that Baekhyun could be a head shorter than him, but feel so much taller. He had a presence that seemed to bear heavily on Chanyeol, the aura of a man in charge, of a person who knew his worth.

It was the first time that Chanyeol had felt so small in Baekhyun’s presence. Insignificant. But it would not be the last.

“Is that all?” Baekhyun asked, disinterested. His eyes flickered to the door that swung shut one final time. They were the last ones left in the lecture theatre with its curved, padded walls that had dulled with years without wash.

Chanyeol frowned. He straightened his back and tried to feel bigger, but only felt like a child in his father’s shoes. Pretending. “What do you mean?”

Baekhyun shrugged a shoulder. “Don’t waste my time. Is that all you came to say?”

Chanyeol scratched his neck, unsure of what to say now. He felt that he had come with something in mind, he knew that he had a script prepared, ready to blast away at Baekhyun. But now that the fury had been diminished into a black spot where it once raged wild, what was there left to say?

Chanyeol smiled sheepishly at Baekhyun, rubbing his elbow. “We can get brunch,” he offered, “My treat.”

Baekhyun’s gaze slid upwards in contemplation before he shrugged again, almost as if he had no other choice but to accept Chanyeol’s offer, treading the fine line between reluctance and indifference. At least it wasn’t a rejection, Chanyeol thought.

He would take it.

They went to a nearby canteen in the heart of their university campus and sat on the seats outside, where smoking was permitted. With a bowl of bibimbap in front of him, Baekhyun reached for the cup of black coffee just behind it. Smoke rose from the murky contents of the paper cup, with bubbles that swirled in circles. Baekhyun eyed the coffee for a brief moment before he took a sip, not caring for its scalding temperature.

He put the cup down as he reached into his pockets for a stick. Baekhyun pinched it between his teeth as he flicked his lighter with a hand cupped around the dancing flame. Chanyeol watched all of this with a keen eye, letting his own kimchi stew cool down in the breeze.

Baekhyun blew out a breath of smoke. It puffed back into his face, although he was not fazed by it. The wind ruffled his hair, giving it an effortlessly messy yet stylish look. He sat back in his seat, with his legs hooked at the ankles diagonally outside of the table and a cigarette dangling dangerously between his fingertips, looking out to the campus greenery where a few students were strolling through. The weather was not too cold for the transition between summer and autumn. Leaves were still largely green with a smattering of gold tinging their edges.

Chanyeol sat, legs crossed, poking at a piece of tofu in his soup. Under the sunlight that seemed to spotlight only on Baekhyun, Chanyeol thought that Baekhyun was beautiful. He was beautiful in the way that one admired a stranger, knowing nothing else about their lives except for the way that they looked, and hoped that they would be the person who lived the life they imagined they did.

What kind of life did Chanyeol imagine Baekhyun had?

Baekhyun caught Chanyeol’s inquisitive stare, arching a brow at the same time that he raised his cigarette back to his lips. Chanyeol flushed, embarrassed to be caught staring. He took a spoonful of his soup before a mouthful of rice.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” Chanyeol asked.

“Sure,” Baekhyun said, blowing out the cigarette smoke in a thin trail that wavered in front of his face. Without turning his body, Baekhyun picked up his metal spoon and broke the yellow egg yolk in the centre of the stone bowl. Yellow oozed out as the yolk deflated and Baekhyun began to stir his food disinterestedly, not hiding his lack of intention to eat it.

“You’re not hungry?”

“Sure I am.” his half-hearted stirring ceased. Baekhyun put down his spoon in lieu of picking up the cup of coffee again.

“But you’re not eating.” Chanyeol pointed out.

“Curious today, aren’t we?”

Chanyeol looked down at his food. “I was just asking.”

“As I was just saying.”

“Why’d you even agree to brunch if you weren’t hungry in the first place? Why’d you even bother to order food you weren’t planning to eat?”

“Propriety,” Baekhyun said, leaning over to tap his cigarette over the ashtray. A cylinder of ashes fell. Baekhyun leaned back against his seat, planting his elbow against the armrest as he took another long drag. His eyes never left Chanyeol’s as he exhaled slowly. “Besides, you were paying for it, weren’t you?”

“So what? You were never planning to eat it even when you knew I was paying?”

“Maybe.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to.”

Chanyeol frowned as he let go of his spoon, letting it clatter against the rim of his bowl. “You are such an asshole.” he said tersely, about to stand.

Maybe Kyungsoo was right about Baekhyun afterall. Baekhyun wasn’t a good guy. Baekhyun knew that Chanyeol was about to buy him food with every intention of wasting it, and still he let Chanyeol go ahead and buy it.

What a fucking asshole.

But before Chanyeol could grab his sling bag, Chanyeol paused, suddenly remembering the question that haunted him from their previous conversation. He looked up with a petulant frown on his face.

“What did you mean, by the way?”

Baekhyun looked up, caught off guard by Chanyeol’s question. “What?”

“The last time.. what did you mean when you said that we were killing ourselves,” Chanyeol mumbled, feeling awkward himself. “For other people’s benefit.”

The crease between Baekhyun’s brows disappeared as he tilted his head to the side, studying Chanyeol’s eyes. “Are you happy?”

This time, it was Chanyeol’s turn to be caught off guard. “What?”

“Would you say that you’re a happy man?”

“I..” Chanyeol shook his head. “What does that have to do with what I was asking you?”

“Everything.”

Chanyeol waited for a long moment, waiting for Baekhyun to elaborate on his answer, but all Baekhyun did was to lean back in his chair and wait for Chanyeol to ask the natural question. Chanyeol relented, disgruntled.

“Why?”

“Because if you’re not happy, then what’s the point of doing it?”

 _Of course I am_ , Chanyeol wanted to say immediately, _how could I not be?_

Yet, the words clung onto his tongue. And the longer he waited, the more stale they grew. How could he not be happy? He had almost everything needed to be happy: a loving family, supportive friends, a stable lifestyle that allowed him to do everything he wanted.

Right?

But why was it that he couldn’t make himself say the words? I’m happy, I’m happy. They sounded so familiar but felt so foreign. Worst of all, they were beginning to feel like a lie.

“I—” Chanyeol looked away, clenching his fists. “I’m good.”

“But that wasn’t the question I asked, was it?”

Chanyeol’s eyes flashed. “I’m happy, okay? I would say that I’m a happy man. What’s it to you?”

“You just don’t seem like it, that’s all.” Baekhyun shrugged, taking a sip of his coffee. “Quite the opposite, actually.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You always look like you’re searching for a fight. You don’t seem to have an equal relationship with your friend. Seems to me like there’s a lot of repressed feelings over there. Some deep set unhappiness.”

“You don’t seem that happy either.” Chanyeol deflected.

“I’m not. But _I’m_ not the good boy, am I?” Baekhyun smiled. He brought the cigarette to his lips and took another long drag. Smoke blew out of his mouth in a white cloud that dissipated quickly in the wind-drift. He leaned back and sighed as he looked at the sun distantly.

“Well— I’m happy enough with how my life is, okay? I’ve got supportive friends and family, I’ve got everything I need—”

“Don’t tell it to me” Baekhyun said dismissively. “I don’t care. I’m not the one you need to convince.”

“What do you mean? You’re the one who asked.”

“And yet, you’re the one who doesn’t believe yourself.”

A flock of crows flew overhead, crying as they did. The door behind their table creaked as a group of students walked in, laughing at an inside joke as they held the door open for each other.

“I..” Chanyeol said quietly.

“What I will never understand,” Baekhyun began, looking back into his cup of coffee, now only half-filled. “is how people can waste their life doing things that they hate, for people they hate.”

“I don’t understand.” Chanyeol looked towards the campus greenery. “How does that relate to what we were talking about?”

“We always talk about dying as an immediate event that ends everything, but we never talk about how we kill ourselves slowly every single time that we do things that go against everything we stand for. We just kill another part of ourselves piece by piece so that we are long dead before our body gives up.” Baekhyun looked at Chanyeol, scrutinising his expression with his blank expression that gave nothing away. “Tell me something, Chanyeol.”

“What?”

“Would you still be doing what you’re doing, if you could do anything you wanted?”

“I—” Chanyeol said, but stopped abruptly. _I hope so,_ he thought. “I think so.” he said instead.

Baekhyun laughed and shook his head. It was sad, disappointed, humourless. “You don’t believe that.”

“I do.” Chanyeol puffed up his chest defensively.

“You don’t even want to think about it.”

“I did,” Chanyeol hissed, “and that’s my answer.”

Baekhyun said nothing in return. He kept his eyes trained on the ground, and for a brief moment, Chanyeol thought that Baekhyun looked slightly deflated.

After a long and uneasy silence, Baekhyun finally spoke monotonously. “You know, Chanyeol,” he sighed. Baekhyun threw his head back, blinking at the now cloudless sky. “There’s nothing more to be said if we’re not going to be completely honest with ourselves.”

Baekhyun stood up slowly, drinking the rest of his coffee in one long gulp before crushing the paper cup in a hand. Then, without looking at Chanyeol, he crushed the butt of his cigarette in the ashtray. The body of the cigarette crumpled at the bottom, and a weak trail of smoke drew waves in the air, dragged along by the slow wind that blew against Chanyeol’s face.

Suddenly, it occurred to Chanyeol that something was slipping out from between his fingers again, just as he felt it back that day. This was a moment that was leaving, an opportunity that would never present itself again, and it filled Chanyeol with a sense of panic. Without thinking about it, Chanyeol stepped forward.

“Wait,” Chanyeol said hastily. Baekhyun paused in midstep, looking back at Chanyeol with a raised brow. Chanyeol gulped, steeling himself. “I— I would like to go out late at night. If I could do anything that I wanted.”

Baekhyun turned around fully with his hands in his pockets and his feet pointed outwards. The corner of his lips curved upwards. “To go out late at night?”

“Yeah.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

“You’re twenty-one and you haven’t been out late at night?” Baekhyun laughed, “What? Did your nanny stop you from it?”

“Kyungsoo’s not my nanny,” Chanyeol hissed, “And he didn’t stop me from doing anything I wanted to.”

“But he didn’t encourage you.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?”

“Would you encourage your friend to do drugs if they wanted to?”

Baekhyun looked up. His split second surprise turned into mirth. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

Chanyeol fell silent. Baekhyun leaned back further, scrutinising Chanyeol with a smug look on his face. “What did you want to do out late at night?”

“I never planned that far,” Chanyeol confessed after a long second, still slightly miffed. “I just wanted to try being out late at night. I don’t know. Maybe drive around the city, maybe watch the sun rise.”

Baekhyun stood up slowly, pocketing his box of cigarettes. “How about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Baekhyun said, “We can go on that little drive of yours. Do whatever that comes to mind.”

How could Chanyeol refuse?

Was he not someone, too, afterall?

Picking out an outfit wasn’t difficult. Chanyeol never had many articles of clothing that could be considered stylish, and among the small pool was a particular green plaid shirt and navy slim fit jeans to pair together. It was stylish in an effortless way, something that Chanyeol thought might fit in with Baekhyun’s chic style.

As he stood in front of the mirror, he agonised on how he should comb his hair. A side parting would make him look too boyish. It might reinforce the idea that Chanyeol was inexperienced, a child in a man’s body. Combing it back with gel might make him look like he was trying too hard to impress, something that Chanyeol feared.

But he was, wasn’t he? He was still standing in front of the mirror wondering what Baekhyun would think of his outfit.

“Hey,” Jongdae said. Chanyeol snapped out of his thoughts and looked at his friend in the mirror. “Going somewhere tonight?”

Picking out an outfit wasn’t the difficult part. The difficult part was trying to get out of the flat without arousing suspicion from anyone.

“Oh. Um, yeah.” Chanyeol said.

“Oh. Like, on a date?” Jongdae teased as he swaggered to Chanyeol. He tugged on his own shirt but nodded towards Chanyeol with his chin. “I see that you’ve got on your best shirt.”

Chanyeol looked down at his plaid shirt and frowned, “This isn’t my best shirt.”

“Yeah, according to _Kyungsoo_.” Jongdae rolled his eyes playfully, pulling on the sleeves of Chanyeol’s shirt. Chanyeol lifted his arm with a question on his face. “But trust me— and you _should_ trust me with your wardrobe choices— this is your best shirt. It suits you. It’s very.. you.”

“Very me? And what’s that?”

Jongdae pondered on it for a second as he unbuttoned the hem of Chanyeol’s sleeve. “Down to earth, I think. You have that boy-next-door image.” he chuckled, rolling up Chanyeol’s long sleeve. “Why did you button this up, anyway?”

“It’s cold outside.”

Jongdae shot Chanyeol an unimpressed look. “Okay, yeah, no. Plaid shirts with long sleeves always enhance the wearer’s look by like, a thousand percent, if the sleeves are rolled up to their forearms. Don’t you ever notice that?”

“No?”

“Then it’s a good thing that I’m here, isn’t it? Wouldn’t want you going on that date looking like a nerd.”

“It’s not a date,” Chanyeol said, “I’m not going on a date.”

“Uhhuh. Right. It’s half an hour to ten and you and your pals just decided to go on a spontaneous supper adventure. With you wearing your best shirt.”

“It’s _not_ a date,” Chanyeol insisted, “I’m just meeting a classmate, that’s all.”

“Okay,” Jongdae dragged out the word, never dropping the teasing lilt in his voice as he moved to work on the second sleeve. “Sure, buddy. I believe you.”

“Seriously.”

“Yeah, okay.” Jongdae said and beamed at Chanyeol, yellow braces on display. “If you insist.”

Chanyeol huffed, although he couldn’t help the fond smile that crept onto his face. He loved Jongdae’s easy acceptance of things, even if Jongdae didn’t always believe it. He was the antithesis of Kyungsoo’s relentless quest to get a confession written in blood, and Chanyeol loved Jongdae for all the moments where he let well enough alone.

Jongdae took a step back to examine Chanyeol’s attire, rubbing his chin with a finger. “It’s good,” Jongdae said at last, “You look good.”

“I look good?”

“Presentable, anyway.”

“Asshole,” Chanyeol laughed, nudging Jongdae with his elbow. “What do you think about my hair?”

“What about it?”

“Is it too.. I don’t know, too childish?”

Jongdae took a step back and bit on his lower lip as he took a thoughtful moment to study Chanyeol’s hair. “No,” Jongdae shook his head easily, “I think it makes you look innocent and boyish. It suits you. It’s who you are.”

Chanyeol looked back into the mirror and sweeped his hair further to the side with the beginnings of a frown pulling on his mouth.

He wasn’t sure that Jongdae was right. Something felt off.

It took him half an hour to get to the train station near the heart of the city by bus. He’d never been to this district before though, it was a place where the rich congregated and splurged on awful bags that were priced too high to be justified. This was the first time he was here, feeling small in front of the imposing shopping mall above the train station with its big windows and bright lights making its presence known.

Chanyeol didn’t think too much about it when he saw a slick, black car pull up near the taxi stand. He didn’t think too much about it when he first noticed the shine on the car, how seemingly scratchless the surface of the glossy black is. What he did was to open the door and fumble as he got seated in the passenger seat, letting the door slam shut next to him.

As soon as he pulled on the seatbelt, the car started moving again. It cruised down the long stretch of road as Chanyeol took his time to admire the interior, to notice the smell of leather in the car that he’d never smelt before, something that probably only belonged to newly produced cars with their expensive leather seats and shiny display screens. None of which belonged in the cabs he took with their ratty old meters, scratched with faded buttons from years of use, or the old beat up family van his mother drove.

This car smelt like luxury.

He gestured towards the window excitedly, “Can I?”

Baekhyun spared him a glance before looking forward again. “Sure.”

With a face-splitting grin, Chanyeol lowered the window. As it went down, the sound of the city started filling the quiet between them. Sounds of other vehicles on the road, of a traffic light beeping around the corner, of the mindless chatter that faded into unity. The breeze brushed his hair to the sides, caressing his face.

Cautiously, Chanyeol put his hand out of the window, resting his wrist against the ledge. The wind whizzed by his fingers. As he moved his fingers in a wave-like motion, he watched as the lights from the buildings in front of him, from the vehicles they were speeding by blurring around his fingers.

It was nice. It felt like a taste of freedom.

Chanyeol’s smile grew as he retracted his hand and winded up the window again.

“Woah,” Chanyeol said, smiling in spite of himself, “Nice car.”

“It’s a Mercedes-Mayback S-Class.” Baekhyun said, as if it was supposed to mean something. His eyes were still on the road, a limp hand steering the wheel with practiced ease.

In the dark, Chanyeol couldn’t see much of anything except for the brief rectangle of orange light from the spaced out street lamps that coasted up the plane of Baekhyun’s face, illuminating it just for a second before it got eaten by the shadows.

Chanyeol took a long moment to ponder on it, to think about what that could have meant. Was Baekhyun pointing out that the car was supposed to be expensive? Did he mean that it was a new model? What was the appropriate reaction to have, for something that he knew nothing about?

Eventually, Chanyeol settled on saying, “That’s nice.”

Baekhyun glanced at him from the side before he snorted. “You don’t know what that means.”

“Am I supposed to?”

“I don’t expect you to.”

Now Chanyeol was upset, “Then why’d you mention it to me in the first place?”

“Why’d you reply that it’s nice?”

“What else was I supposed to say? I don’t know what a Mercedes-Mayback S-Class is supposed to be, I don’t know what it means. Was I supposed to tell you that?”

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.” Baekhyun said, “I’m not forcing you to do anything you don’t want to.”

Chanyeol was ready to refute it with his own accusation when he realised that it was true. Baekhyun didn’t force him to do anything he didn’t want to, Baekhyun didn’t force him to say anything he didn’t want to. It was all Chanyeol. _He_ wanted to be seen as someone who understood Baekhyun, _he_ wanted to be seen as Baekhyun’s equal.

“Well,” Chanyeol said, slightly miffed, “It’s a nice car, okay? End of.”

“End of.” Baekhyun agreed casually, turning the wheel to the left as they rounded the corner into another long stretch of roads leading to an expensive residential area.

“Where are we going?” Chanyeol asked, looking out inquisitively.

Baekhyun let the question sit for a minute. “Where do you wanna go?”

“What do you mean?” Chanyeol frowned, turning back to look at Baekhyun, puzzled.

Baekhyun shrugged a shoulder, “Where do you wanna go? This whole idea was yours, remember?”

It was _yours,_ Chanyeol wanted to say. “I don’t know.” he said instead, “What is open at this time of the night?”

“Nothing good.”

Chanyeol risked a glance at Baekhyun, “Well, what do you usually do at night then?”

“That depends on the company, doesn’t it?”

“What— what do you mean?”

“Sometimes,” Baekhyun said matter-of-factly, “I go for a smoke. A drink.” he paused, blinking uninterestedly. “A fuck.”

Chanyeol felt his body turn to stone, back ramrod straight as he stared back at Baekhyun’s side profile, looking forward with that air of ease around him. Chanyeol observed the relaxed way that Baekhyun leaned his head towards the window, the way that Baekhyun’s fingers barely wrapped around the steering wheel, he wondered about the way that Baekhyun would fuck.

He wondered if Baekhyun would fuck his partner with the same cold look in his eyes, always so distant and absent. He wondered if Baekhyun would take his time to explore his partner’s body, if he would let his hands travel down the terrain and map its unique landmarks, or if Baekhyun was the kind of person who liked it rough. If Baekhyun would be the type to plaster his hands everywhere, but never put them anywhere, if he was the type who would chase his pleasure without regard for the other party’s own orgasm. If he would finish in his partner and leave them high and dry.

A smoke, a drink, a fuck.

“That’s a terrible lifestyle to have,” Chanyeol said.

“It is what it is.” Baekhyun shrugged. “Actions are just actions until you pass judgement on them.”

“What are you saying? Are you calling me judgemental?”

“All I’m saying is that actions aren’t inherently good or bad. Actions are just actions, just as words are just words. How we choose to understand and interpret them is the meaning we give them.”

“So would you say that murder is ever permissible? That killing someone is just killing someone? That it could even be _good?_ ”

“Do you notice that even the words you use are loaded with subtle implications? The barrier of our communication isn’t the lack of it— it is the limitations of our language.” Baekhyun tilted his head, “Killing someone is always bad by definition, because the word demands it to be so.”

“What are you even talking about?” Chanyeol shook his head with a sceptical frown, “The words demand it? I don’t get it. Words don’t demand anything. They’re— they’re literally words, each with their own definition.”

“And how are they defined?”

“They’re—” Chanyeol sighed in frustration, “I don’t know _how_ they’re defined, okay? They just are. They’re defined like that. Why are you asking me?”

“I’m not asking you anything except to think.” Baekhyun replied calmly, “Why do you think words are defined the way they are? Their definitions are their demands.”

Chanyeol pondered on Baekhyun’s words for a long second before shaking his head resignedly, rubbing his temple. “You’ve lost me now.”

“Would you say that killing someone is bad, Chanyeol?”

Chanyeol gaped, dumbfounded. “I—” he closed his mouth, aghast that Baekhyun would even ask him that. “Obviously it is. What kind of question is that?”

“Would you blame someone for taking another person’s life?”

“Yes,” Chanyeol hissed immediately, “It’s the same thing. You’re killing someone.”

“So would you blame a family member for pulling life support for their loved one?”

Now Chanyeol froze. He turned to face Baekhyun with his insulted scowl starting to melt away. “That’s.. that’s different.”

“Is it?”

“Of course it is,” Chanyeol said unkindly, “How could it be the same? When you pull the plug, you don’t do it maliciously. How could you? You love that person— you— you don’t enjoy it. You do it in their best interests. But you don’t think about that when you kill someone. I don’t know what you think about, but you don’t think about them the way that you think about your family.”

“So the intent changes the situation for you?”

“Yes. Doesn’t it change the situation for everyone?”

Baekhyun’s mouth quirked as he looked ahead, turning the wheel and steering the car around the corner. “It does,” Baekhyun agreed easily, “Because the intent of the action is merely the meaning we project onto it.”

“Huh?”

“A stranger who pulls the plug would be killing the patient, whereas a family member pulling the plug would be helping them to end their life. Strip that away, what differentiates them?”

Chanyeol remained silent as realisation dawned on him. He’d walked right into Baekhyun’s trap, and he didn’t know how to argue his way out of this. Baekhyun snuck another glance before snorting to himself, pleased by Chanyeol’s inability to retort. His words were as smug as the smirk spreading on his face.

“Words are just words and actions are just actions until you give meaning to them.”

Chanyeol looked down at his lap, closing his hands into a loose fist. “And I assume that you just.. don’t. You choose not to give meaning to anything.”

“Well,” Baekhyun hummed in thought, quirking his eyebrows, “I wouldn’t say that.”

“But you said—”

“I said it was meaningless to speculate if they were right or wrong. I didn’t say anything else.”

“Then what’s the point of even giving meaning to something, if you aren’t willing to say if it was the right or wrong thing to do?” Chanyeol turned to Baekhyun sharply, “Isn’t that the whole point of giving meaning to something? That you want to be able to justify your actions and words?”

“What does it even mean to do something without having a meaning in mind?” Baekhyun asked without missing a beat, “Who ever does anything without having something in mind? We’re not robots programmed to do or say things without having thoughts of our own.”

“So you just do whatever you want.. and you say whatever you want, and you just don’t ever wonder if you’re a good person?”

“Don’t conflate ideas here. What you’re saying implies that there’s some morally significant threshold where doing enough good deeds guarantees that you’re a good person.” Baekhyun said blankly, “Besides, if intent is important to you, you should also remember that having good intentions doesn’t always mean that your actions are justified, either.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you think it’s okay for a doctor to harvest organs from five patients with no chance of survival, to save a healthy patient that would be guaranteed to survive?”

“Of course not.” Chanyeol snapped, “But that’s not the same as—”

“Isn’t it, though?” Baekhyun glanced at Chanyeol, unamused. “He has good intentions, and he intends to save lives. Those five patients weren’t going to live, anyway.”

“How else do you judge people, then? How do you decide who’s a good or bad person?”

“I don’t,” Baekhyun sighed softly, “Everyone’s a terrible person, Chanyeol. Some people are worse than others, sure. But we’re all the same— festering inside while pretending that we’re not.”

“You don’t really believe that,” Chanyeol scoffed.

“Do I?”

“No, you don’t.” Chanyeol shook his head resolutely, staring at the windshield without looking at the quiet street ahead. “You can’t seriously believe that there’s no good person. I mean— you have to believe that you’re a good person, at least.”

“No, I don’t.” Baekhyun said quietly, “I’m not a good person.” there was a long bout of silence before Baekhyun spoke again, even softer than before. His voice was resigned as he said, “You missed the point, anyway.”

“What point?”

“There are no right or wrong words or actions to say because what we’re judging is really the intention behind them. You seem to think that it’s only acceptable to have good intentions, but what kind of life would that be?” this time, Baekhyun turned his head just enough to hold Chanyeol’s gaze. “Always trying to look and feel like a good person when you actually aren’t.”

Even in the poor light afforded by the passing streetlamps, Chanyeol could feel the daggers from Baekhyun’s pointed stare. Chills ran through his arms and down his spine as Baekhyun’s cold eyes looked at him with an unforgiving, accusing stare.

For some reason unknown even to himself, Chanyeol felt unnerved by the sting in Baekhyun’s gaze. He shouldn’t be made to feel like it was a message for him, but he did. In that single second that Baekhyun held Chanyeol’s gaze, Chanyeol realised how long a second could truly be. He realised how naked he could feel, sitting in the car next to a stranger but feeling like Baekhyun had peered into his soul and saw something unsavoury in there.

Chanyeol looked away with his jaw locked, clenching his fists tightly. His eyebrows twitched in indignation as he stared back at his reflection in the passenger-side window. As they drove through the junction and a new line of trees fenced his view, Chanyeol thought that there was a flicker of something in his reflection. For just a split second, he thought that he saw his reflection stare back at him with a blank expression, and a knowing glint in his eyes brushed away by the wave of pale green and yellow leaves waving at him in the background.

They ended up in a more secluded part of the city, separated from the general populace by its price tags and marbled floors. As Baekhyun cut through the empty mall with his hands in the pockets of his denim jacket, swaying as if he owned the place, Chanyeol realised that there was an air of confidence that was exclusive to those with wealth and power. Baekhyun was a man with a small, delicate frame, but walking through the mall with shops closing their shutters without a care in the world, it seemed as if the mall was too small for Baekhyun.

Chanyeol struggled to keep up with Baekhyun’s steady gait.

“Hey,” Chanyeol said, “Where’re we going?”

“Somewhere.”

“It looks like everywhere is closing.”

“Well then,” Baekhyun said, “You’ll just have to find out for yourself, won’t you?”

Chanyeol fell silent as he followed Baekhyun, looking around at the vast space between him and the rows of shops that flanked them, occasionally met by the chilling, suspicious gaze of employees locking the doors of their shops. He tugged on the rolled sleeves of his plaid shirt, suddenly feeling out of place, and quickened his footsteps.

After what felt like a long time, they arrived at a sixties-looking American retro diner in the corner of the mall, next to the exit of the mall. It was a quaint shop, so much smaller than its neighbours, so invisible despite its neon sign board that read ‘24 HOURS, CLOSED MONDAY’.

Baekhyun strolled in and turned left on the L-shape of the shop, shoulders still swaying to the rhythm of his footsteps. Chanyeol followed behind, taking a look around the relatively empty place.

There were checkered tiles that contrasted its cyan booth seats and white plastic tables, with a jukebox parked at the end of the shop by the bar seats flashing with pink and yellow lights. There were only two waitresses on duty talking with each other on the other side of the bar, both decked in a light pink dress that fell above their knobby knees, wearing a white apron around their waists.

As Chanyeol passed by, one of the waitresses— the shorter one with a high ponytail— broke eye contact with her friend, following Chanyeol as he scrambled by. Her eyes twinkled with interest as her hand fell down slowly along the outline of her ear. Chanyeol offered her a quick smile before he went by, finding Baekhyun already at the end of the other side.

Baekhyun slipped into the booth seat by the window easily, as if he’d been here thousands of times before. He probably had, Chanyeol thought to himself, squeezing into the other booth seat awkwardly, trying to avoid the metal leg of the table in the center with his gangly limbs.

The waitress with the high ponytail came by shortly and placed two menus in front of them with a cordial smile on her rosy lips. Although she looked at the both of them, her gaze lingered on Chanyeol with something shy in the crinkles around the sides.

“Welcome to Billy Bee’s, I’ll be your server for tonight.” she said politely, merrily. Baekhyun took a menu and started flipping through it with nothing more than a cursory glance. Chanyeol looked between Baekhyun and the waitress before taking the other menu, looking through each page more thoroughly than Baekhyun was.

His stomach sank as he noted the price paired with every delectable picture on the menu. It was out of his range. A single drink here could buy him three meals in school, and a proper plate of food here was enough for two weeks of groceries.

There was no way that he could afford this, any of it.

As he began to look through the list of food, seeking out the item with the lowest price tag, the waitress spoke again, waving her pen around with one hand.

“For today’s dessert, we have apple pie with cream. Oh, and we have minestrone soup for our soup of the day as well. Pretty nice for the cold weather, I think.” the waitress laughed.

It was obvious that it was meant to make everyone laugh together, a gesture of courtesy that patrons would give to the staff even if it wasn’t funny at all. Perhaps it was something that other customers did for her, but it was not something that Baekhyun was going to do.

He didn’t even look up at her. He sat there, flipping through the pages with half-hearted gusto. There was no sign that he was even aware of her presence except for the little downward tug on the corner of his lips.

Chanyeol looked up at her with a sympathetic smile, a hand still holding onto the glossy pages of the wide menu. “Seems like it.”

The waitress nodded eagerly at Chanyeol, although she looked slightly unnerved by Baekhyun’s cold shoulder towards her. “Shall I come back when you’re ready to order?”

“I’ll have a strawberry milkshake,” Baekhyun said, closing the menu none too gently. The waitress looked startled for a split second before she came back to herself, scribbling down the order in the little notepad on her palm before looking to Chanyeol. Chanyeol glanced at Baekhyun.

“I.. I haven’t decided,” Chanyeol confessed. Baekhyun’s stony eyes continued to bore into Chanyeol’s.

“What do you want?”

“I..” Chanyeol bit his lower lip, scratching his knees through his jeans, “I don’t know.. it’s all quite expensive—”

“I’ll pay for it. Just pick something.”

“I can’t let you do that.” Chanyeol protested, “I’ll feel bad—”

“For fucks sake,” Baekhyun muttered. He leaned back and ran a hand through his hair, looking away. “Just choose something already.”

“Oh! Would you like a recommendation?” the waitress suggested with a bounce in her voice. Her eyes shined brightly as she stepped towards Chanyeol, leaning in a little too closely, about to point her pen towards his menu when Baekhyun cut her off.

“He’ll get a vanilla milkshake.”

The both of them looked at Baekhyun, surprised by the hardness in his voice.

Chanyeol frowned, “I don’t like vanilla.”

“Sure you do. Undecided people always like vanilla. You’re undecided, aren’t you?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Then we’ll be having a strawberry and a vanilla milkshake.” Baekhyun said to the waitress. He tossed his menu to the end of the long table where the waitress stood, still awkwardly bent towards Chanyeol.

The waitress stood up straight and looked at the menu lying askew with half its body off the edge of the table. Timidly, she looked up at Baekhyun from under her straight bangs and found him leaning back against the cushioned seat with a sharp smile curving up at the corner of his pink lips.

Baekhyun lifted his chin just a little as he planted his elbow on the table and leaned his cheek against his palm. “Well?” he said mockingly, “Aren’t you gonna write that down in that little notebook of yours?”

The waitress furrowed her brows as she drew her notebook closer to her chest, unable to tear her gaze away from Baekhyun. The air between them became heavy with an uneasy silence, punctuated only by the groaning engine of vehicles driving by outside the frosted window.

Chanyeol quickly closed his menu and reached across the table to pick up the menu thrown aside by Baekhyun, stacking them together as he offered them to her.

“We’ll have a strawberry and vanilla milkshake please.” Chanyeol said apologetically. The waitress looked to Chanyeol with a crease between her brows and a space between her lips before her gaze flickered to Baekhyun for just a split second, as if she were afraid, as if a microsecond longer would burn her. She turned as her skirt swayed and her long ponytail whipped behind her as she left.

Chanyeol waited a good few seconds for the steady thud-thud-thud of the waitress’ footsteps to fade before he leaned towards the table with his hands curled in a fist. “What was that for?”

“What was what?” Baekhyun played dumb.

“You were being rude to her,” Chanyeol hissed, “She was just doing her job.”

“Everyone’s just doing their job,” Baekhyun said plainly, “Doesn’t mean that everyone does it well. Some people are just bad at it.”

“She wasn’t bad at it. She was going to offer some recommendations—”

“She overstepped her boundaries,” Baekhyun shrugged a shoulder, sliding his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I was just reminding her to take a few steps back, is all.”

“She overstepped her boundaries?” Chanyeol repeated. It was a question, although it didn’t sound like one. Chanyeol was in disbelief, as he usually was, with the words that came out of his companion. He wasn’t sure what Baekhyun meant, yet at the same time he felt a familiar tightness in his chest that felt a lot like distrust.

“She overstepped her boundaries.” Baekhyun affirmed.

“And what ‘boundaries’ were those?”

“She was trying to flirt with my date,” Baekhyun said, “Is that not overstepping her boundaries?”

“Your date.” Chanyeol said flatly, “Your date.”

“My date.”

“And I’m your date?”

“Sure you are,” Baekhyun said, “You’re my date for tonight, aren’t you?”

“And this is a date?”

“Sure it is,” Baekhyun leaned back against the backrest, lolling his head until it stopped tilting rightwards, “It is whatever you want it to be. It is whatever you want to call it.”

“I’m not calling this a date.” Chanyeol shook his head. “It’s not a date.”

“Okay then.” Baekhyun shrugged in easy agreement. For some reason, this aggravated Chanyeol even more. It was as if Baekhyun wasn’t taking him seriously enough with his quick, dismissive replies. Chanyeol frowned hard at Baekhyun.

“It’s _not_ a date.” Chanyeol emphasised, “A date is where you go with someone you’re interested in, okay? It requires some kind of romantic feelings— which we do not share, by the way.”

Baekhyun’s eyes wandered all over the room. “Sure.”

“So don’t call me your date, okay? I’m not your date. This isn’t a date.”

“Alright.”

“Are you listening to me?” Chanyeol asked, frustrated.

“Sure I am.”

“Then why don’t you say something else? Don’t you get— aren’t you tired from repeating the same words over and over again?”

“Aren’t you tired from trying to pick a fight over and over again?” Baekhyun shot back, looking sharply at Chanyeol. Although his voice was gentle, the words were anything but, and it jolted Chanyeol out of his irritation.

“I’m not trying to pick a fight.”

“Aren’t you?” Baekhyun snorted, “Why else do you keep trying to provoke me?”

“Because you’re not saying anything besides the same few words. It’s annoying.”

“What else is there to say?” Baekhyun ran a hand through his hair, parting it like waves falling off the center. “Clearly you and I subscribe to very different ideas about love.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have a very traditional mindset about things.” Baekhyun gestured at Chanyeol. “Always wanting to put labels on things, always rejecting other ideas before you’ve even heard about them—”

“I don’t reject—”

“And, clearly, you seem to think that love is another simple concept that can be clearly defined. You seem to think that you can draw a line that clearly demarcates where an activity stops being something and becomes something else instead.”

“And what’s the problem with that?” Chanyeol bristled, “So what if I believe that it’s easy to identify things? So what if I _want_ to be able to do that? Is that wrong?”

“It’s not wrong.” Baekhyun said, turning his head as the waitress approached meekly with a hand supporting the tray wobbling on her palm. “It’s just stupid.”

“Strawberry milkshake,” the waitress announced, standing at the head of their table with a hand balancing a tray with two towers of milkshakes on it, one pink in colour and the other offwhite. She took the glass with the strawberry milkshake and slid it in front of Baekhyun, not wanting to be near him for long. When she placed Chanyeol’s milkshake on the table, her dark eyes locked with Chanyeol’s for just a second, long enough for Chanyeol to see the mix of pity and worry in there.

Pity for him, worry for him.

“And a vanilla milkshake,” she finished lamely, holding the tray to her chest, “Is that all that I can get for you two?”

“That’ll be all.” Baekhyun answered for them both and dismissed her with a wave of his hand. The waitress’ eyebrows dropped slightly in disapproval before she made her way back.

A hush fell over them as Baekhyun leaned forward, picking up the plastic straw the way he always pulled a new cigarette stick from his box, and stirred the top of his milkshake lazily. Baekhyun took a small sip before smacking his lips in approval, nodding his head as he took another sip.

“It’s not stupid,” Chanyeol countered. His arms were still folded defensively as he sat there rigidly, not making a move to his vanilla milkshake. “How’s it stupid?”

Baekhyun’s eyes darted to Chanyeol’s briefly. He pulled away from his straw. “How is it not?”

“I asked _you,_ ” Chanyeol said, “ _You’re_ the one who called it stupid. Not me.”

“Well, of course I called it stupid. What else could it be?” Baekhyun scoffed, stirring his milkshake lightly. “Putting labels on anything is such an arbitrary thing to do. It’s useless.”

“How is it useless? Everyone’s on the same page if there’s a label. You don’t go around making stupid assumptions about what’s what and end up looking like a fool. I mean— why else do you think we have things like marriage, anyway? It’s not just about being on the same page, it’s about being recognised in the eyes of others and the law. How is it useless?”

“And what’s so great about being married, anyway?”

Chanyeol blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Baekhyun sat back, folding his arms across his chest. “What’s so great about being married? People always end up falling out of love, anyway.”

“No, they don’t.” Chanyeol scowled.

“Yes, they do.” Baekhyun sighed, throwing his head back to look at the ceiling. “They don’t always divorce each other, but they fall out of love.”

“That’s not true. I’ve read articles and seen pictures of old couples who are still very much in love. They exist.”

“Sure they do. They’re the minority, that’s why their story makes headlines and waves.”

“News of breakups still makes headlines and waves.”

“Don’t be daft,” Baekhyun said, slightly annoyed. “You and I both know that the private affairs of public figures don’t stay private. But that’s not what I was talking about.”

“Then what _were_ you talking about?” Chanyeol snapped, “I was under the assumption that you were talking about _everyone._ ”

“Chanyeol,” Baekhyun said wearily, “Do you think that we’re the same person that we were five years ago?”

Chanyeol hesitated, caught off-guard by the sudden change in topic. His frown wavered. “I’m not sure I get what you mean.”

“If you were to go back in time, would you say that you could be the exact same person that you were?”

“I think so,” Chanyeol mumbled, “I mean, I _am_ me, so..”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I do.” Chanyeol’s voice took a defensive edge, “Why?”

“Because I think that’s bullshit— that’s why.”

“Bullshit? Why—”

“Do you _really_ believe that we are the same person for our entire life?” Baekhyun said flatly, “I can promise you that you couldn’t pretend to be who you were five years ago. Maybe not even a year ago.”

“Why not? I am the same person. I—”

“You’re not the same person. Even the slightest change in your views means that you’re not the same person anymore.”

Chanyeol opened his mouth to say something but realising that he had nothing to say, closed his mouth and fell back into his seat. He was beginning to see Baekhyun’s point.

“If you’re not even the same person that you were a year ago, do you really expect yourself to keep loving the same person for the rest of your life? For the other person to love you back for the rest of theirs?”

“So you think love is fleeting?”

“Infidelity is something we come to accept as part of a relationship, isn’t it?”

“No,” Chanyeol said, “It really isn’t.”

“It is. It’s like a dance, isn’t it? Someone cheats, they fight, they get back together. It’s knowing when to step back and pretend to repent and knowing when to accept your lousy, cheating partner back.”

“That’s not a normal relationship. That’s a toxic one.”

“And yet they never leave.”

Chanyeol looked out of the window at the other end of the table and saw his tight expression in the reflection. “Sometimes.”

“Most of the time.”

“And what? Just because some people cheat, just because some couples forgive their partners and stay together, that makes it okay? You think infidelity is okay?”

“This goes back to our previous conversation, doesn’t it?” Baekhyun picked up his straw again. “I don’t think infidelity is good or bad or okay.” he said with a tone of finality, signalling the end of the conversation. “It is what it is, and what it _is_ is a part of a relationship.”

Chanyeol stared at Baekhyun with something akin to despair sitting in the bottom of his guts. He wondered if he was too naive in his view of the world, or if it was Baekhyun who was too cynical and jaded. He lowered his gaze, resigned. He didn’t want to believe that what Baekhyun said could be true, but it probably was, and somehow that left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Giving his melting drink another stir, Baekhyun looked up from his half-empty glass. He blinked once, as if he was surprised by how stiff Chanyeol had gotten over the last few minutes, as if he hadn’t realised how uncomfortable Chanyeol had grown. “Aren’t you going to drink your milkshake?”

Chanyeol’s gaze fell onto the glass in front of him, untouched since it was put on the table. Thick droplets of condensation ran down its curved sides and congregated in a puddle at the wide base.

 _I don’t like vanilla,_ Chanyeol wanted to say. He wanted to be petulant about it and throw a fuss. Instead, he scooted forward, picking up his straw with two tensed fingers and started to stir his own drink, taking long sips until he was done, until he was dredging up the last bits from his straw.

“What do you know?” Baekhyun said with a barely suppressed chuckle in his voice, “You do like vanilla afterall don’t you?”

Did he?

Chanyeol thought he didn’t. But, as with most things so far, maybe he was wrong about it after all.

As with most things so far, maybe Baekhyun was right.

“Hey,” Jongdae said, holding up a hand as Chanyeol walked through the door. Chanyeol paused, staring at Jongdae for a moment before he remembered how to smile. He held up his own hand in greeting as he closed the door with a foot.

“Hey,” Chanyeol said, kicking off his shoes. Jongdae dropped his hand to pat the seat on the sofa next to him. Chanyeol all but fell backwards onto the sofa, huffing out a breath as he settled onto the soft cushion under him.

Jongdae lowered the already inaudible volume of the TV, turning to Chanyeol with a mischievous grin. “So..”

Chanyeol raised a brow, “So?”

“How was it? Was it someone I know? Where did you go? What did you do? Oh, did you guys _do_ anything?”

“Jongdae,” Chanyeol groaned, rolling his eyes, “We didn’t _do_ anything. Geez.”

“Carefully avoiding my other questions, I see.”

“I was not— I _am_ not.” Chanyeol pushed himself up. Jongdae followed suit, wiggling closer to Chanyeol.

“So who was it? Is it anyone I know?”

Chanyeol opened his mouth to say no, I don’t think you do. But the moment his lips parted and his tongue hit the roof of his mouth, he froze.

_“Are we talking about the guy— Byun Baekhyun— right? The one who’s friends with Lay Zhang?”_

Chanyeol sucked in his lower lip and hesitated for a long moment. “I don’t know,” he said at last. He looked away, at the TV. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh, I see,” Jongdae teased, not missing a beat. “Being secretive, are we?”

“I’m not,” Chanyeol chuckled. Jongdae’s moods were always infectious. “I can’t help it that you don’t know them.”

“Then you should tell me about them already!”

“Well..” Chanyeol mumbled, fiddling with the hem of his shirt, “First of all, he’s a he.”

“Oh. Is he cute?” Jongdae waggled his brows salaciously. Chanyeol elbowed Jongdae.

“No,” Chanyeol sighed, “I wouldn’t call him that. Not cute, anyway.”

“Right. Not cute then.”

“He’s.. well, he’s not _cute,_ but he’s..” Chanyeol trailed off, remembering the way that Baekhyun’s eyes studied him, the way that he turned his head, such minute movements that were so expressive. “He’s really good looking. He’s really.. charismatic, you know?”

Jongdae nodded, “So he’s the type of guy that charms everyone?”

Chanyeol smiled wryly, “No, not really. I don’t think he manages that. But.. I don’t think he cares about who likes or dislikes him either. It’s not really his thing.”

“Huh,” Jongdae nodded thoughtfully, scratching his temple. “He sounds kinda cool.”

“He is.” Chanyeol agreed, “I think he’s really cool most of the time, anyway.”

“So what do you think of him when you don’t think that he’s being cool?”

For a moment, Chanyeol was transported back to the lecture theatre where Baekhyun sat cross-legged with his hands supporting his weight, where crumpled pieces of papers fluttered around them like snowflakes. For a moment, Chanyeol was back outside the canteen with Baekhyun pulling his hand away from his face, with the burning cigarette in between his fingers and the smell of smoke that permeated the crisp air like a bad omen. For a moment, Chanyeol was back in the car with Baekhyun staring back at him with a look of distaste.

_“Always trying to look and feel like a good person when you actually aren’t.”_

What did Chanyeol think of Baekhyun, when he didn’t think that Baekhyun was cool?

Did he think that Baekhyun was mean? Did he think that Baekhyun was an asshole? Did he think that Baekhyun was pretentious?

But that wasn’t it, was it?

The answer was that Chanyeol thought that Baekhyun was all of the above and more. He wasn’t just mean, he wasn’t just an asshole, he wasn’t just pretentious. He was something else entirely.

“I can’t say,” Chanyeol said at last, “It’s hard to say.”

Jongdae kept silent for a long beat, staring at Chanyeol with a cryptic expression. “I see,” he replied. He nodded and just like that, the weirdness gripping him dissipated. Jongdae was back to his usual cheery self, and Chanyeol was glad for it. “Hey.”

“Hmm?”

“Did you have fun?”

Chanyeol remembered the feeling of the wind flying through his fingers, the way the lights in the city lit up the area, the way that he stepped into a place he didn’t belong in. He remembered the smell of the car, all expensive leather, and he remembered the neighbourhood they drove around, their big metallic gates that seemed to cage them in rather than keep them out.

But most of all, Chanyeol remembered the way that Baekhyun smiled at him when he had finished his vanilla milkshake. Baekhyun was pleased, he smiled his approval at Chanyeol. Approval of Chanyeol.

He was pleased by something that Chanyeol had done. All the days of condescending laughter and snide comments had led to this fleeting moment in time where Baekhyun had given Chanyeol his approval.

Chanyeol had done something to please Baekhyun.

And Chanyeol had never felt more alive than he did in that moment.

“Yeah,” Chanyeol said, “It was fun, Jongdae. It was really fun.”

When Chanyeol really noticed where he was, the first thing he saw were his hands, blurry figures coming into focus. The sunlight was as bright as he remembered it to be, clear skies overhead with a flock of birds flying across, black dots against a calm sea of blue.

He was holding a pair of metal chopsticks in one hand and a spoon in the other, bracketing a steaming bowl of kimchi stew.

Chanyeol blinked, drawing away from the table.

He heard it before he saw it, the sound of a lighter flickering to life. Chanyeol looked up sharply and found Baekhyun sitting across him, hand cupped around the drunken flame with a fresh stick between his lips. He bowed his head and waited for the flame to catch on before letting go of the button pusher, pocketing it in his ripped jeans. After a long drag, he pulled the cigarette away to sigh softly, letting the smoke dance away in ribbons.

“Where am I?” Chanyeol asked, “What is this?”

“A dream,” Baekhyun said without looking at him. He was looking towards the expanse of green in front of them, at the students strolling across with what he assumed were pleasant smiles on their faces. “Your dream, to be exact.”

“My dream? Then why are you here?”

This time, Baekhyun rolled his head around his neck and flashed Chanyeol an indecipherable smile. “I think you know.”

“I— I don’t know.”

“Oh,” Baekhyun chastised, “I think you do.”

“No, I don’t.” Chanyeol insisted, gripping tightly onto the chopsticks and spoon in his hands. “Why are you here? If you’re here to leave more disparaging comments, you can forget it. I’m not interested in hearing them.”

“If only it were that simple,” Baekhyun said. He brought the cigarette to his lips and took another long drag, blowing it out like he was a performer.

“It’s not?”

“It’s not.” Baekhyun nodded. He reached over to tap his cigarette into the ashtray in the middle of the table, watching as it came off in little confetti-like pieces of white. As he pulled away, he took the cup of black coffee besides his untouched bowl of bibimbap in his other hand. “Here, I’ll give you a hint.”

“What hint?”

“The reason why I’m here,” Baekhyun said, as if it tired him to say this, “has to do with the question that you’re not asking me.”

“Which is?”

Baekhyun’s eyes snapped to Chanyeol in distaste. “Why don’t you use that brain once in a while, Chanyeol? Or has it already rotted away?”

Chanyeol clenched his teeth, taking in a deep breath as he watched Baekhyun take a sip of coffee. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well, that’s just too bad, isn’t it?” Baekhyun shook his head. He swirled his paper cup once and glanced down at it. “I suppose that we all have parts of ourselves we’d prefer not to know about, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, Chanyeol. What _do_ I mean?”

“This is—” Chanyeol stood up abruptly, letting go of the utensils in his grip. They fell onto the table noisily, as if offended by how Chanyeol was treating them. “This is pointless.” Chanyeol hissed, picking up his sling bag, “I’m leaving.”

“You know what your problem is?” Baekhyun asked. Chanyeol looked over his shoulder, irritation shrouded by curiosity.

“What is it?”

Baekhyun leaned back in his seat and hooked an ankle over the other, smiling at Chanyeol as he took another sip of coffee with his cigarette smoking away in one hand. Behind Chanyeol, a group of students laughed as they entered the canteen, pulling open the rickety door that cried as it always did.

“Well?” Chanyeol pressed, letting annoyance cloud his words, “Since you know what my problem is, why don’t you just tell it to me already?”

“You see,” Baekhyun said, pointing at Chanyeol with the hand holding his cigarette. “that’s your problem.”

“.. What?”

“Your problem is that you always want to be told things. You want to be told what to do, what to think, what to say. That’s your whole shtick. Nothing’s ever organic with you.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?” Baekhyun said, “Isn’t that why you let Kyungsoo tell you who to befriend?”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t that why you let Jongdae tell you what to wear?”

“That’s not—”

“Isn’t that why you let me tell you how to act?”

“That’s not true!” Chanyeol snapped, feeling his body tense up like a taut violin string ready to break. “It’s not true!”

They both held each other’s cold stares for a prolonged period of silence, with Chanyeol squeezing the strap of his sling bag into smaller and smaller rolls and Baekhyun tilting his head the other way in a slow and precise way. Baekhyun searched Chanyeol’s eyes for something Chanyeol was unaware about, and as he reached forward with his cigarette pointed out, the calculative stare in Baekhyun’s eyes vanished instantaneously.

“Well,” Baekhyun said, tapping his cigarette into the ashtray again, “that’s disappointing.”

“What?”

“But, nevertheless.” Baekhyun sipped his coffee, giving Chanyeol a onceover. “It isn’t important whether you think it’s true or not.”

“And why’s that?”

Baekhyun threw his head back as he finished his coffee, crumpling the empty cup in his hand as he said, “Because it is. That’s just the way you are. You’re a people pleaser. You want to make people happy with you, even if it’s at the expense of your own happiness. That’s why you’re never happy. You’re too busy pretending to be happy, trying to please everyone around you that you end up bearing all the unhappiness by yourself.”

“I’m not unhappy.”

“And you’re not angry at Kyungsoo.”

“I’m not angry at Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol said, “why— why would I be angry at him?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” Baekhyun shrugged, bringing the cigarette to his lips again.

“Stop making things up. I’m not angry at him. You’re just— you’re spouting bullshit.”

Baekhyun held Chanyeol’s gaze for a long time as he blew out the smoke in thin lines that faded with the breeze. Although Chanyeol was the one standing up, looking down at Baekhyun, it felt as if their positions were reversed.

Finally, Baekhyun spoke in a level voice. “Maybe we can have a proper conversation,” Baekhyun said, crushing the butt of his cigarette against the ashtray. “When you’re done pretending to be the things that you’re not.”

“Chanyeol.”

Chanyeol blinked, a snippet of a silhouette walking towards him. The light coming in through the gaps of his opaque curtains only allowed a line of white to be illuminated on his walls, cloaking the room in darkness. Not that he needed any light to recognise the voice and the figure walking towards him, anyway. He’d know that voice anywhere.

The bed next to him dipped slightly a second later, followed by a warm hand on his cold ones.

“Chanyeol, wake up. It’s breakfast.”

“Mmh,” Chanyeol said, muffled by his pillow. He lifted his head up enough to speak clearly. “what— what time is it?”

“Eight-ten. Jongdae already left for his morning classes.”

Chanyeol nodded weakly before falling back onto his pillow, swiping his hand under the pillow.

“Why’re you up so early, Kyungsoo? We don’t have anything today.”

Kyungsoo smiled gently, “I feel better.” he shrugged, “Besides, I thought that you could help me to catch up on what I missed this week.”

Oh.

The classes that Kyungsoo missed. The classes where Chanyeol was preoccupied with thoughts of Baekhyun. The classes where Chanyeol took notes in a dream-like trance.

Those classes.

Chanyeol opened his eyes fully, looking at the cupboard opposite of him for a moment. “Oh,” he said. Oh, the only thing he had in mind. Oh, the only reply he had to give Kyungsoo.

Oh, was that the plan for today?

Oh, was that your plan for today?

_“You want to be told what to do—”_

Oh, was that _my_ plan for today?

“Oh,” Chanyeol said again quietly, still staring fixedly at the cupboard.

“Yeah,” Kyungsoo said with a smile growing on his dry lips. He looked up towards the ceiling, oblivious to Chanyeol’s reticence. “and then I thought that we could do a little cleaning up around here, and before Jongdae comes back we could cook something. We haven’t done that in a while.”

As Kyungsoo spoke, Chanyeol tore his gaze away from the little scratch on the door of his cupboard, letting it wander over to Kyungsoo’s face. Kyungsoo, his best friend since they met in middle school. Kyungsoo, the friend who’s always been looking out for him, keeping him out of trouble. Kyungsoo, the friend who’s always known what was better for the both of them.

Kyungsoo, the friend he’s always loved.

And as Kyungsoo continued speaking, Chanyeol let himself observe his face. To look at the strong shape of Kyungsoo’s nose, those thick eyebrows that always gave away his feelings, to those expressive eyes that were too intense for his own good.

And as Kyungsoo finally looked down and locked their gazes, Chanyeol imagined what it would be like to gently clasp Kyungsoo’s face within his hands and to swipe his thumb across those tanned cheeks. He imagined what it would be like to bring Kyungsoo’s face towards his own and to study his friend’s vulgar eyes. He imagined what it would feel like to tell Kyungsoo that his plan was all his own, why should he have any part in something he didn’t agree to, after all?

And Chanyeol imagined the way that Kyungsoo would finally fall silent, the way that his eyebrows would draw together and how confusion would surface from the depths of his eyes.

And as Kyungsoo looked back at Chanyeol, Chanyeol couldn’t help the little smile that tainted his lips. With Kyungsoo’s hand on top of his, Chanyeol turned his hand over to slot their fingers together.

After a long beat of silence, Chanyeol said, “Okay.”

“Yeah?” Kyungsoo asked, releasing a short breath of laughter.

“Okay,” Chanyeol said, letting his smile broaden. “we can do that.”

It was the most genuine smile he’d given Kyungsoo in a long time.

He’d forgotten that the next week was the mid-semester break before the mid-term exams.

It had been eight days since he last saw Baekhyun.

He wondered how Baekhyun had been in the days that they hadn’t met. He wondered if Baekhyun was studying for their mid-term exams like the rest of them were. He wondered if Baekhyun would open the lecture notes on his laptop or computer or whatever, and if he would remember everything that the professor explained on those blank pages. He wondered if Baekhyun would get bored of studying and do something else instead.

A drink, a smoke, a fuck.

“Hey,” Kyungsoo whispered, poking Chanyeol lightly with the tip of his pen. Chanyeol looked up slowly, languidly, pivoting his chin on his palm.

“Hmm?”

“It’s getting late,” Kyungsoo said, nodding towards the digital watch on his wrist. The one that Jongdae and Chanyeol bought for his birthday two years ago when they were about to graduate from high school, when they weren’t sure what the future held for the both of them.

“Oh,” Chanyeol said, folding his arm on the table as he scanned the room around him. The sun had fallen behind the building obscuring the view of the campus and the sky had pulled up its navy duvet. Where crowds of people occupied every seat in the straight files of tables hours ago, there were only a few lone bodies occupying corner seats or tables of four with their faces buried in their work. Chanyeol blinked. He hadn’t realised how much time had passed or how late it had gotten.

“We should probably head back. We’d be more productive if we got more rest tonight than trying to stay awake here.”

“Oh,” Chanyeol murmured.

Oh, as in oh, was that your plan? Oh, as in oh, was that your plan for us?

Oh, as in oh, was that _my_ plan?

Kyungsoo blinked, surprised by the unspoken opinion in that soft ‘oh’. He ceased all his packing and put his arms down on the table, turning to Chanyeol with a small frown already sitting on his pretty bow-shaped lips.

“.. I’m sorry?” Kyungsoo said, confused, “Did you.. want to stay back to study, or something?”

This was the turning point. The fork in the road.

He could still go back on himself and pretend that he misspoke. Oh, as in oh, I hadn’t realised it had gotten this late. Oh, as in oh, yeah we should probably head back. Oh, as in oh, you’re right about it as usual.

As usual.

As _usual._

Chanyeol had made up his mind.

“Um,” Chanyeol said, letting his gaze fall to the little smudge on the surface on the table where someone had written something in pencil lead and tried to erase it. A little gray mark on the otherwise pristinely white table. “yeah, actually. I did.”

This time, it was Kyungsoo’s turn to say, “Oh.” with a hint of bewilderment in his words.

Without moving his head, Chanyeol dragged his eyes to meet Kyungsoo’s. What came as a revelation to him wasn’t the way that Kyungsoo looked back at him, stupefied. What came as a revelation to him wasn’t the way that Kyungsoo’s mouth, so often twisted into a stern frown or thin line of disapproval, hung open like he wanted to say something he didn’t have words for.

What came as a revelation to Chanyeol was the small spark of satisfaction deep in the trenches of his chest. The ever-present itch that had finally been scratched, the fantasy he never knew he had that just became a reality.

His lips twitched for just an instant, too quick for Kyungsoo to register but too slow in fading away for Chanyeol.

Then, at last, Chanyeol flashed Kyungsoo a warm smile. A smile to reassure Kyungsoo that the disapproval tied to his words were just a figment of his imagination.

Did Chanyeol, his best friend since they met in middle school, the man who had only ever wholehearted believed and trusted in Kyungsoo, say something to insinuate that he had other ideas separate from the ones that Kyungsoo had? No.

Never.

“I just want to finish up the last two chapters so that I can start on the timed practices tomorrow.” Chanyeol said, docile, “That’s all.”

“Oh,” Kyungsoo said with an air of relief. He brightened up considerably, although he was still miffed that Chanyeol had said anything contrary at all. “okay, then. In that case, I’ll just go back first.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Kyungsoo packed the last of his books into his bag and slung it over his shoulder. Pushing in the chair with his hip, Kyungsoo said, “I’ll see you at home later.”

Chanyeol nodded and waved him off. “See you later.”

He waited until Kyungsoo was out of sight before he dropped his hand and let the smile fall off his face. And then, Chanyeol waited for another ten minutes before he started packing his bag as well.

When he left the library, the sun was already chased away by the howling wind and the steady footfall of dark clouds that thundered through the sky. It looked a few minutes away from a downpour and everyone on the streets was scrambling for shelter, for a way to make it home dry. Chanyeol only put his hands in the pockets of his pants and walked forward without a place in mind.

One benefit of being a student in one of Seoul’s more reputable colleges was the fifteen minute walk to the centre of the city, with its bustling nightlife that always seemed more lively than anything in the day. There, people strolled around brightly lit buildings with their tall glass doors and windows and structures like they weren’t afraid of anything. Thunder continued to roll through the thick clouds overhead and yet the crowds still filled the wide streets like sardines packed in a can.

And just like the rest of them, Chanyeol continued walking.

He didn’t know where he was going, just that he needed to go. He didn’t know why he felt that he needed to be somewhere and not just anywhere, but it was as if a navigator embedded within him had sprung to life and would not rest until Chanyeol had gone where he needed to.

There was that word again, need. Was it possible to need something you know not of? Chanyeol didn’t know, but he walked, anyway.

He walked until the crowd around him started thinning. He walked until the shops around him, once filled with mannequins wearing selected sale pieces, were replaced with large posters of famous models wearing exquisite albeit dull pieces of clothing without price tags attached to them. He walked until the next time that he noticed anything again, it was the neon sign board that read ‘24 HOURS, CLOSED MONDAY’.

Huh. He was back at the diner.

He’d been walking to the diner and he hadn’t even realised it.

The navigator inside him was still whirring, dissatisfied with where Chanyeol had gone.

What would Kyungsoo say if he knew that Chanyeol wasn’t in the library finishing his work, but was standing in a place he could afford nothing? What would Kyungsoo say if he knew that Chanyeol had lied to him about staying back in school? Would he call Chanyeol a liar? Would he be dismayed?

And what would Kyungsoo say if he found out that it came with sudden clarity to Chanyeol what he was looking for? _Who_ he was looking for?

Would he be angry at Chanyeol? Would he be ashamed of Chanyeol?

Chanyeol walked in anyway.

The diner was busier than it had been that night that they were here. Chanyeol chalked it up to the school break and the time— it was only around nine, still a perfectly reasonable time to have dinner. Two tables were occupied, one with two men in crisp suits nursing a cup of coffee with half-finished dinner sets in front of them, the other with a young family still browsing through the menu with their almost-bald baby beating down on the baby seat.

Chanyeol walked by them and turned on the L of the shop. Although he suspected it from the start, he was still hit by a wave of disappointment to find the last booth seat empty save for the acrylic sign holder announcing the new breakfast set of the month and the pepper and salt shakers.

He turned back and rounded on the L with his mouth set in a grim line, head bowed, and missed the way that the waitress leaning against the bar followed him with interest in her big eyes.

“Are you looking for your friend?”

Chanyeol stopped and looked up, searching for the voice before it occurred to him that it came from the back. He spun around on the spot and pointed to himself.

“Were you.. talking to me?”

“Yeah. It was you, wasn’t it?” the waitress said with a teasing smile on her glossy pink lips, “You came here last week with your friend. Shorter, more moody than you.” her hands gestured to their height difference.

Chanyeol chuckled, bringing a fist to cover his mouth. “Um, yeah. Guess it was.”

“Are you looking for him?”

“Um, yeah. I was.”

“Well, he isn’t here yet.” the waitress said, “Are you hungry?”

“Excuse me?”

“Are you hungry? Do you wanna order something?”

“Oh, um, no. I don’t think—”

“On the house.” the waitress cut in, “I hope you don’t mind, but I remembered that you said the prices here were too expensive. I mean, I can see what you mean. So, how about you have one on the house?”

“Oh, no. I really don’t think I can accept that—”

“It wouldn’t _really_ be on the house, anyway, you know?”

“.. I’m sorry?”

The waitress straightened her back as she waved him towards her. Chanyeol frowned, slightly worried and confused, but he took the few steps forward that closed the gap between them. From how close they were, he could see the blush she wore on her cheeks and a little scar at the corner of her eyebrow that would not be completely concealed by her makeup.

“He’s a big tipper, that friend of yours.” the waitress whispered conspiratorially, “I didn’t know that last week because I’d just started working on Monday, but your friend comes around here quite often. He’s something like a regular here, and he’s known by the staff to have deep pockets.”

Chanyeol nodded unsurely, encouraging her to continue. Her eyes darted across the room to the table with the family, where the baby was now starting to tear up, before she looked at Chanyeol again.

“So far, from what I’ve heard— which is what other staff have experienced, mind you— he doesn’t wait for his change. He pays in big bills, right? And then he leaves as soon as we’ve received it.”

“Does he? I didn’t see that.”

“According to my floor manager, I must have done something to royally piss him off last week. That was the first time he paid the bill exactly as it was.”

_“She was trying to flirt with my date.”_

Chanyeol’s eyes widened in recollection.

“But, he came in here just the other night. Think it was two nights ago, he came in here alone just past midnight. He ordered a coffee— black, with nothing else— but paid enough for a set meal.”

_“Is that not overstepping her boundaries?”_

Quickly, Chanyeol shook away the thought and frowned at himself in admonishment, although he was looking at the waitress. “So what’re you saying?”

If the waitress thought that he was frowning at her, either she didn’t mind or didn’t care. Her smile took on a mischievous edge as she leaned closer.

“That, technically, you could order anything on the menu and it’d already be paid for by your friend.”

“But he didn’t say that.”

“But he didn’t _didn’t_ say that.” Chanyeol tilted his head with his arms folded, unimpressed. The waitress added, “Besides, you are finding him, aren’t you?”

“So?”

The waitress shrugged, “So why not get something to eat and wait for him? See if he comes by tonight?”

Chanyeol eyed her for a long moment before he slid onto the high chair next to him, dumping his sling bag on the neighbouring chair.

“Do you want a suggestion? I didn’t get the chance to give you one the last time.” the waitress said, pulling out the menu from under the table. Chanyeol hesitated for a second before he gestured to her in a ‘go ahead’ manner. She smiled at him, opening the first page and pointed to an item at the bottom of the page with her freshly manicured fingernails. “The triple-triple is pretty good. Comes with three pancakes, breakfast sausages and hash browns. And a drink of your choice, of course.”

“What kind of drink?”

“Coffee, tea, orange juice?”

“I’ll take the orange juice, thank you.”

“Not a problem,” the waitress beamed, closing the menu. “It’s my pleasure, actually.”

“Right, but that’s just something you’re supposed to say when you’re serving customers.”

The waitress cackled, drawing the attention of the two men finishing their coffee and the other waitress standing near the jukebox. She shook her head and let her ponytail sway behind her. “No, no. I mean— have you _seen_ the kind of customers we get here? If they’re not people who think too highly of themselves, snotty people, really— no offense to your friend— they’re usually drunk in the middle of the night. Not exactly the best kind of customers to serve, honestly speaking.”

Chanyeol stared at her with wide eyes and a slack jaw as she turned around to key his order into the tablet behind her. He was aghast by her raw honesty and found himself unable to come up with a single reply to her unusually frank words. But when she spun around again, the words came naturally to him and tumbled out of his mouth like ill-fitting square blocks of wood out of a circular exit.

“Do you always speak like this to your customers?” Chanyeol asked, “Are you always this honest with them?”

“No, obviously not. Not when my tips depend on them.” the waitress snorted, “But you’re not exactly a paying customer, are you?”

Chanyeol flushed as he looked down sharply and clenched his fists.

“Besides, and more importantly, actually, you’re a good person. I don’t feel like I’m walking on eggshells around you.”

Chanyeol froze. His fists unfurled slowly as he peeked up from under his fringe. “.. Excuse me?”

“You’re a good person,” the waitress repeated nonchalantly, “It’s really easy to see that.”

“Um.” Chanyeol paused, skewing his mouth to the side in thought. “Thank you, I think.” he let the silence between them settle before he asked, “How do you know that, by the way?”

The waitress blinked, “How do I know what?”

“That I’m a good person.”

“Do you not want to be?” the waitress asked incredulously.

“No. No, not like that. I mean— how do you know who’s a good person or a bad person? What qualities do you use to make that judgement?”

The waitress shrugged uneasily, looking down at the table as she clapped her arms together. “It’s just my instinct.”

“Instinct?”

“Yeah. You know, that feeling you get when you meet someone for the first time? With some people, you get a distinct sense of fear or danger or— or wrongness. That there’s something completely off about them, something that warns you against hanging around someone even if you can’t put your finger on it? Whereas with some people, you get such a warm feeling from them. The kind like you’d be safe around them, that you _want_ to hang around them.”

“And I give you.. good vibes?”

“Basically, yeah.”

And as Chanyeol pondered on her words, he drifted away from the diner and into spaces of time which were long past.

Suddenly, Chanyeol was back in the lecture theatre all over again, looking over his shoulders slyly when he met Baekhyun’s hard stare. Suddenly, Chanyeol was back in Baekhyun’s car again, cruising under dingy streetlights that travelled up Baekhyun’s face, giving him a glimpse of the icy look of disdain which marred his beautiful face. Suddenly, Chanyeol was back in the booth seat with his fists closed tightly and his heart pumping away, looking across at Baekhyun who was meeting his stare with his familiar sneer.

And in all of them, Chanyeol was unable to look away. He was playing with fire, but he was pouring gasoline into the flames with mesmerised desperation.

“Oh,” Chanyeol said, “Hey, um. I mean, this seems mutually exclusive. I mean.. is there ever a chance that it’s a bit of both?”

“A bit of both?”

“Yeah,” Chanyeol said as he wiggled in his seat and crossed his legs, feeling unnaturally stiff. “Like, you feel somewhat.. I don’t know, like they could be both good but devastating for you? Have you ever encountered that?”

“No?” the waitress said with a deep line between her brows, “I mean, usually there’s one side that wins out, right? You either feel more relaxed or more threatened by someone, and that’s your instinct talking to you.”

“Then what do you do when you feel nothing anymore?”

The waitress looked sadly at him, dropping her frown. “I don’t know,” she said honestly.

The meal, as promised, was free, which made it very delicious although Chanyeol suspected that if he had to pay for it, it would only have been something he could consider worthwhile. And in the hour that he waited, Baekhyun never came. The waitress shrugged unapologetically but offered him a bashful smile, something that could have been demure, something that Chanyeol might have reciprocated if it wasn’t for the slightly haughty way that she spoke to him earlier.

_“But you’re not exactly a paying customer, are you?”_

He left the posh building by the adjacent exit and found himself facing a foreign landscape of smaller and quieter rows of shops lining the road to the next mall, half of which had their lights off and shutters down.

This should have been the point where Chanyeol turned around and started his journey home. It was past ten by now and Kyungsoo would be expecting him soon, but the navigator inside of him was still stirring more fervently now. It whirred and it cried something ugly inside of him, that he couldn’t turn back now, not when they hadn’t completed the task that they came here to do.

Chanyeol walked forward.

The rows of shops gave him the appearance of being dilapidated from where he stood earlier, far away and in the dark. Walking through them, however, made Chanyeol realise that that was part of the allure. It was meant to give the appearance of old money, it only looked decrepit on the outside but peering through the unscratched glass windows, Chanyeol could see that the shops were lush with carpet and expensive fabric all around. This was a gentrified district and was still part of the rich district that Chanyeol had no place being in, but he couldn’t help the morbid fascination of peering into an elusive part of society he never knew existed until now.

And as he walked forward, Chanyeol wondered how it was possible for two such different worlds to co-exist in the same plane, each with their distinct set of members that never seemed to interact with each other.

He thought about the stares he received as he walked along the mall last week. He thought about the way that his blood ran cold at the prices in a _diner_. He thought about the way that excitement thrummed through his body as he sat in Baekhyun’s car, wiggling his fingers outside the open window with child-like glee.

What was Chanyeol doing? What was he trying to do here?

Chanyeol was so caught up in his own thoughts that when he came back to himself, he noticed that he was standing on one side of an obscure street where the street lights couldn’t reach well. He was shrouded in shredded white light that moved with the leaves of the tree overhead, and in the single moment that the tree swayed in the night, petals of white light fell onto the pavement in front of him, revealing specks of dark red on the ground.

Chanyeol blinked and then squatted down to get a better look.

The trail of blood was still fresh, glistening in the weak light the way watered down paint would. Cautiously, Chanyeol followed the trail of blood which grew thinner and thinner as he went along, as if the injured person had some sense to wipe away the blood dripping from his body. And if Chanyeol had any good sense left in himself, he should have turned back and headed home. Back to Kyungsoo who would study his rattled expression and ask him what happened, back to Jongdae who would make light of Chanyeol’s night adventures.

But the navigator in him was screaming by now, screaming for him to go on and on and _on_ already.

Eventually, Chanyeol turned the corner where the trail died off and found in its place the body of a man slumped against the wall, chest rising with a weak whistling sound.

“Fuck.” the man coughed, and then Chanyeol could place it. A voice he could recognise anywhere.

“Baekhyun?” Chanyeol called out, feeling his palms grow sweaty. He picked up his phone from his pocket and fidgeted with it for the torchlight for seconds that felt like an eternity before the light came on.

Propped up against the moldy wall, Baekhyun laid cradling one arm around his torso with blood dripping down his nose and mouth generously. There were lines of red crawling down his cheeks from his hair and a purpling bruise blooming around his swelling eye.

“Baekhyun?!” Chanyeol yelled, scrambling to Baekhyun’s side immediately. Baekhyun opened his good eye and looked at Chanyeol with a mixture of surprise and relief. Chanyeol cupped Baekhyun’s face in his hands briefly before he patted Baekhyun’s shoulders, looking at the bloodstains all over his shirt. “Oh my god, Baekhyun? What’s happened to your— oh my god, your face! What’re you— what’re you doing here?”

“Bleeding.” Baekhyun said evenly, softly.

“I’m serious, Baekhyun! This is— this is serious! Look at your face! You’re— you’re bleeding all over.”

“Really?” Baekhyun said dryly, “I couldn’t tell.”

“Shit. This is bad. This is— this is really, _really_ bad. Wait, let me just call the am—” Chanyeol unlocked his phone, about to call the ambulance when Baekhyun’s hand, wet with his blood, wrapped around Chanyeol’s trembling wrist. Chanyeol stiffened up and glanced down at Baekhyun.

“No.” Baekhyun interrupted quietly but firmly.

“But—”

“I don’t need an ambulance.”

“Baekhyun,” Chanyeol said, trying to keep his voice level, “You’re badly injured. Look at your head. It’s bleeding. You might’ve gotten some bad internal bleeding or something. You might have gotten a concussion. We should really—”

“My car is nearby.”

“Your car is nearby?!” Chanyeol repeated with disbelief. “And what do you—”

“Just help me to my fucking car, Chanyeol. For fucks sake.” Baekhyun barked, narrowing his good eye at Chanyeol irately. Chanyeol closed his mouth and huffed loudly, staring at Baekhyun with frustration set in the thin line of his lips. His instinct advised him against it. Baekhyun should be taken to a hospital and given proper care. But as Baekhyun lifted his head up, staring back defiantly at Chanyeol with a cool anger setting in his open eye, Chanyeol realised that Baekhyun would fight back against him if he did anything against his wishes.

They held eye contact for a long and tensed pause before Chanyeol huffed again, this time in resignation. He threw Baekhyun’s good arm around his neck before wrapping his arm around Baekhyun’s waist, pulling the both of them up in sync. Baekhyun groaned and gritted his teeth as they stood up. He inhaled deeply and shut his eye as hot pain seared up his body. Chanyeol looked down sharply.

“My car.” Baekhyun hissed through his teeth, “Just get me to my car.”

They hobbled for a few minutes under poor light, with Chanyeol always making sure to look out for uneven footing on the pavement and for Baekhyun, leaning limply against his side. Baekhyun guided Chanyeol by nodding his head, and Chanyeol would lead them both slowly along the way.

Baekhyun’s car was parked in a little underground car park not ten minutes from where he was found, which would have been a walk that would take less than five minutes if Baekhyun wasn’t beaten up as badly as he was. It wasn’t hard to spot Baekhyun’s car among the other flashier cars in red and yellow and purple. It was an understated beauty, and something that Chanyeol realised wasn’t meant to attract as much attention as he once thought. That even if Chanyeol thought that Baekhyun was a show off, he wasn’t being as much of a show off as other people in this enigmatic society was.

Chanyeol opened the driver side door and helped Baekhyun in it gently before rushing off to the passenger side.

“What happened?” Chanyeol asked, sliding into the seat. “What did you do—”

“Why does it have to be something that I did?”

“Honestly?”

“Sure. Be my guest, since apparently it’s honesty fucking hour and we’re all sitting here, holding hands and singing kumbaya over a goddamn bonfire.”

“Don’t talk so much. I thought I saw that your lip was busted just now.”

“My whole fucking face is busted.”

“I’m glad you know that at least. Shit, let me just turn on the— ” Chanyeol said, turning on the light in the car. Now that he was able to examine Baekhyun under better lighting, Chanyeol thought that Baekhyun looked worse than he did. Baekhyun’s lip was busted, that was for sure, as was his nose that looked as if it sat crookedly in the middle of his face. “Oh my god.”

“Don’t say it—”

“It looks worse than I thought.” Baekhyun groaned loudly and turned his face the other way. Chanyeol breathed in, looking at the windshield while he tried to compose himself. “Baekhyun, we should really bring you to the hospital. This doesn’t look good—”

“No.”

“I don’t know if you need stitches. I can’t do stitches. I don’t even know how to clean up your wounds—”

“No hospitals. I don’t need them.”

“Like hell you don’t.” Chanyeol snapped, “Who’s going to help you clean up your—”

“You.” Baekhyun rolled his head over, opening his eye calmly. “You are.”

“Me? Did they damage your hearing as well? I just said—”

“I’ll guide you.” Baekhyun said. His voice was as weak as his complexion, pallid save for the red tracks across his soft skin. There were no demands made in his words, no anger, no irritation, just a plea for Chanyeol to trust him and to follow his wishes. There was a gentleness in Baekhyun that Chanyeol had never witnessed before, a vulnerability that was beginning to open like a poorly healed wound. “Just— no hospitals. Alright?”

Chanyeol looked down, still unconvinced. “Can I at least ask why you’re so against it? I mean— were you.. were you somewhere you weren’t supposed to be? Were you doing something— I don’t know— something illegal?” Chanyeol took a glimpse at Baekhyun, still staring at him with a soft expression, something passive, something tired. “What happened to you, Baekhyun? Who did this to you?”

Baekhyun said nothing for a long time, long enough for Chanyeol to reconsider his words. Was he being too nosy? Was he being rude and invasive? Perhaps it was not in his place to ask such questions.

Then, there was a shift in Baekhyun’s blank expression. The walls in his eyes began to crumble as he pushed himself up against his seat, moaning in pain quietly. It took another long moment before Baekhyun spoke again in a low voice and in it was an overwhelming exhaustion that Chanyeol had not experienced before.

“Did you know,” Baekhyun murmured, “That illegal things are hardly ever done in shady alleyways or streets? You’ll want to do it somewhere reputable where the police would never think such dealings would ever occur.”

“Illegal things? So that’s it? You’re involved in illegal—”

“Gambling,” Baekhyun coughed. A few specks of blood flew from his lips. Chanyeol reached forward to hold Baekhyun but Baekhyun shook his head and waved him away. He sighed heavily, leaning back against his seat. “Gambling isn’t one of the most illegal things that you can do. It’s perfectly legal, actually, as long as you’re not caught.”

“That sounds like bullshit and you know it—”

“Everything is perfectly legal as long as you don’t get caught.”

“That’s not the way that it works.”

“But it is.” Baekhyun gave Chanyeol a wry half-smile, “Think about it. You don’t punish someone for committing the act, you punish them for being sloppy.”

Chanyeol looked down, biting the inside of his cheeks as he stared fixedly at the blood smeared across his wrists from where Baekhyun had held him earlier.

“Regardless,” Baekhyun said detachedly, “People don’t like it when someone’s better than them at their own game. The first thing that they suspect is that the person must be cheating, and the second thing that they do is to beat that person up. It’s a good lesson for anyone ahead of them. When you go to a gambling house, you’re there to lose.”

Maybe it was in the serenity oozing off Baekhyun, or the knowing glint in his good eye that pieced it together for Chanyeol. Chanyeol fell back in his seat and furrowed his brows at Baekhyun.

“You knew it would happen,” Chanyeol whispered, not quite believing himself even as he said it. “You knew that you would get hurt.”

Baekhyun’s eye moved to the side to meet Chanyeol’s gaze, although he said nothing in reply. That, in itself, was confirmation.

“Why?” Chanyeol asked quietly.

“Why does anyone do anything?” Baekhyun laughed humourlessly, “Because they want to. I don’t need to explain myself to you.”

Chanyeol clenched his teeth together.

“And isn’t it curious?” Baekhyun continued, “What a good student like you is doing in a place like this? A student with fifty different highlighters and coloured pen in his little bag, someone who writes everything the prof says like he’s god and memorises the lecture notes like it’s the bible. Isn’t it curious what someone like this is doing, wandering around in an area where he has no business being in?”

“I—” Chanyeol said and stopped when he realised that he didn’t know what to say.

_I was finding you._

_I missed seeing you around._

_I was worried about you._

_I—_

_And then, a small niggling voice surfaced from the back of his head. And then in that instant, Chanyeol was back at the table outside the canteen with the sun overhead and Baekhyun’s secondhand smoke wafting into his face. And then in that instant, Chanyeol was standing up with his sling bag on his shoulder and a hand gripping the strap, glaring at Baekhyun with his lips twisted in a deep frown._

_Baekhyun, with his ever placid expression, staring up at him with his cigarette dangling precariously between his fingers. Baekhyun, leaning back with his legs spread wide, waiting for Chanyeol to finish his sentences. Baekhyun, looking at Chanyeol expectantly, boredly._

_“I don’t_ need _to explain myself to you.” Chanyeol spat with contempt._

And then, Chanyeol was back in Baekhyun’s car, looking at Baekhyun with his mouth that had gone dry.

“I..” Chanyeol said, letting his sentence hang. Baekhyun waited silently, with the same bored expression that he always wore. With the same disdain that he always looked at Chanyeol with.

Something flared in Chanyeol’s chest, scalding to touch and heavy to bear.

“I don’t _need_ to explain myself to you.” Chanyeol said in a low voice, just above a breath. While it came out feeble and timid, the words were anything but. Baekhyun’s eye widened just a fraction before the surprise faded.

Baekhyun let Chanyeol’s words hang heavily in the air for a long time before he smiled. With blood crusting on the side of his lips and face, it looked like a deranged smile. It was dangerous and volatile, but Chanyeol couldn’t tear his eyes away from its cruel curve.

“Alright,” Baekhyun said with approval thick in his words, “My bad.”

“Yeah,” Chanyeol said with more confidence, “It was. You were being rude to me.”

“Alright. My bad.”

“Yeah,” Chanyeol said. This time, his words came out hard. “It _was_ your bad.”

It was only when the words had rolled off his tongue that Chanyeol noticed, for the first time, that there was a sudden shift in the air. It was no longer the one-sided dynamic that Chanyeol had grown used to all his life, listening to people and always complying with them with a foolishly happy smile on his face. Always seen but never heard.

And for the first time, Chanyeol was no longer making excuses. No more lies, no more deflecting. For the first time, Chanyeol was making himself heard in a way that he hadn’t been in decades. He was putting his foot down unapologetically, even if it came out weakly.

And it felt good. It felt like the balance of power had tilted ever so slightly in his favour, and he liked the way it made him feel.

In control.

He felt like he was somebody again. He was no longer pretending to be someone, he was done with that.

He was Park Chanyeol, whoever the fuck that was.

“So, what now?” Chanyeol asked eventually, “I don’t have a driving license.”

Baekhyun looked forward with a thoughtful look in his eye. “Better buckle up, buttercup.” he said, driving the key into the ignition.

Baekhyun stayed in UN Village, atop one of the higher soft rolling hills that overlooked the district, lit up like a maze under the fragile dark skies. Home was a deceptively big double-storey building with unconventional inward curves that ushered the driveway into the heart of the building, resembling an infinity sign that never met in the middle. Where Baekhyun’s neighbours adorned their yard with an assortment of flowers and table sets, Baekhyun adorned his with indifference. Where Baekhyun’s neighbours made their presence known through the muffled sounds of their laughter and silhouettes moving behind thin drapes, Baekhyun’s presence was made known by the deafening quiet that echoed through his house, eating up all the life around it like a vacuum that everyone else had grown used to living with.

Baekhyun pulled into the driveway before killing the engine with a quiet sigh, pulling the key out of the ignition in the way one would pull a knife from a stab wound. They stared facing forward for a long moment with neither of them speaking, taking in the house with not a single light turned on. It looked desolate in the way that was only fit for a house on sale, for a house in the middle of a ghost town.

The house made its presence known with its lack thereof.

Chanyeol turned his head and eyed the grimace on Baekhyun’s bloodied face.

“Is there anyone I should call?” Chanyeol asked, knowing it was a useless question. Baekhyun’s breathing remained steady as he continued looking straight.

“I don’t know,” Baekhyun said offhandedly, “Why don’t you walk up to the door and try?”

“I was just asking,” Chanyeol bristled, “I wouldn’t want to impose on anybody.”

Baekhyun stiffened minutely, a movement nearly invisible to the naked eye if Chanyeol hadn’t been observing Baekhyun as intently as he was. Baekhyun’s eye moved to the side in quiet consideration before he looked back at Chanyeol with a look that treaded between something hollow and something brimming with hurt.

Had Chanyeol said something that hit too close to home?

An uneasiness creeped between them in the time that Baekhyun held his mouth in a taut line. With every second that passed, Chanyeol wondered if there was something under all the apathy and insouciance. Chanyeol wondered, for the first time, if Baekhyun felt more viscerally than he wanted anyone to believe.

“Well,” Baekhyun said at last, “There’s nobody for you to impose on.” and then he turned to open the door with difficulty. Chanyeol took that as his cue to shut up and help him, because Baekhyun was done with that conversation. It was over, and no amount of wheedling would get Baekhyun back into that moment.

Baekhyun grunted and cursed loudly as he was heaved off the car seat. With unbalanced footing, Chanyeol dragged Baekhyun through the door after fumbling for Baekhyun’s key in the pocket of his jeans. The lights came on slowly, row after row, as if it were the end of a performance in a theatre. Warm orange light seeped into the sparse room sluggishly, pulling back a curtain of black that obscured their view of the place a few seconds ago.

The room was wide with a fireplace and two leather sofas placed perpendicular to each other, opposite to a bar furnished with three high chairs at the counter and a sleek looking fridge standing proudly next to an impressive collection of oddly shaped bottles that undoubtedly contained alcohol. Chanyeol took a moment to admire the view of the backyard that lay just behind the tall window, where he could see the cerulean body of water in the pool lined by outdoor lounge chairs.

Unlike the movies, there was no grand chandelier hanging above them, no untouched grand piano on a platform for guests to admire. It was as barren as it had looked from the outside, too much like a showroom that was incomplete.

Still, it was a sight to behold. His own cluttered flat looked nothing like this, with its marble flooring and wooden fixtures. This room alone, in all its minimalism, was still more expensive than the value of Chanyeol’s entire flat and belongings would ever amount to.

Baekhyun groaned as he sank against Chanyeol. Chanyeol looked down at Baekhyun before he scanned the room again. “Where—”

“There,” Baekhyun nodded his head to the left, “There’s a guest room.”

“A guest room?” Chanyeol said as they limped towards the left corridor that lit up in the same way the main room did. They found themselves at the end of a long corridor with closed doors on both sides. “Which—”

With a burst of energy, Baekhyun kicked the first door open. The door gave way and swung open with a loud thud that resounded in the empty hallway.

Chanyeol looked between Baekhyun and the door before he pushed forward, almost dragging Baekhyun along behind him like dead weight. Baekhyun moaned in pain as Chanyeol pulled on his arm around his shoulder, about to lay Baekhyun on pristine bedsheets when Baekhyun gritted out, “Bathtub.”

“What?”

“Put me in the bathtub.” Baekhyun repeated tightly.

“What bathtub?” Chanyeol asked anxiously, looking around the room before he spotted a non-conspicuous door on the other side of the room which blended into the ivory colour of the walls. They hobbled over and with impatience, Baekhyun kicked the door open to reveal a spacious toilet with a bathtub placed at the end of the room, behind a small stool placed between a wide circular sink. The tiles were cold to the touch and although the bathroom looked as uninhabited as the room did, the bathroom was neither dusty nor dirty. The mirror was spotless and there was not a hint of rust on the taps.

With great care and caution, Chanyeol let Baekhyun down in the bathtub where he could lean against the sloping back. Baekhyun’s legs hung over the edge of the bathtub while he rested his head against the walls, letting his hair fan out behind him like an unevenly shaped halo. As Chanyeol took a step back to roll his shoulder, he took a long look at Baekhyun who was taking measured breaths with his eyes closed.

Even with tracks of dried blood running down his wan face and trails of fresh blood crawling down his lips, he looked beautiful. Chanyeol thought that in that moment, between the pain of his blooming bruises and split lip and relief of being somewhere safe, Baekhyun might have been the most beautiful that Chanyeol had ever seen him.

The bright red on his chin, the smudges of dark red along his fingertips and the maroon coloured worms forever etched onto the sleeves of his white shirt only served to amplify Baekhyun’s fragility, that even under all the jaded words and contemptuous looks, Baekhyun still bled like any other man. That he could still be hurt, that he could have been left to bleed and hurt and _bleed_ in the darkness if Chanyeol hadn’t found him.

Chanyeol thought that in that moment, between the concern that swelled in his chest and the clarity of cataloging Baekhyun’s injuries, that Baekhyun’s mortality was the most beautiful feature he possessed, and Chanyeol found himself washed over by a peculiar fondness for the broken man in front of him.

“There’s a towel,” Baekhyun murmured, eyes still closed, “Under the sink.”

Chanyeol spun on the balls of his feet. “Under the..” he muttered, eyes landing on the quaint little cupboard under the sink. He kneeled down to open it, bending over to find a neatly folded pile of unused towels in the bottom shelf. Chanyeol pulled out a towel and ran it under cold water and let the water run off the towel onto his bloodstained wrists and palms, watching the red specks dissolve away.

As the marks on his skin faded and as the water began to heat up, Chanyeol’s mind wandered to the neatly folded pile of towels, to the unblemished bedsheets and spotless mirrors. He thought about the way their footsteps reverberated in the big space filled with nothing, he thought about the way that Baekhyun’s neighbours laughed and how far away it sounded.

_“Well, there’s nobody for you to impose on.”_

He wondered if this was how loneliness looked like, if this was what loneliness sounded like.

Chanyeol wringed the warm towel before kneeling down in front of Baekhyun. Now, he could see the way that Baekhyun’s eye had swelled shut, the mess of angry purple and violet and red that clashed against each other like the eye of a storm. Chanyeol could see better how Baekhyun’s split lip had blood clotting along its length like badly applied lipstick, he could see the cuts that grazed his high cheekbones, little jagged lines that were beginning to puff up in time. With a shallow gasp, Chanyeol gently pushed back a lock of hair that had been where all the red had seemed to originate from in little _drip, drip, drips_ that ran dry long ago.

His whole fucking face was busted, it was easy to see that now.

“Baekhyun,” Chanyeol began, struggling to find the right words for the grotesque sight in front of him, “Are you sure—”

“Chanyeol,” Baekhyun laughed hoarsely, letting his head fall back against the wall with a soft _thud,_ “If you aren’t gonna help me, then _please_ just get the fuck out of here and leave me alone.”

“How can I?” Chanyeol hissed, “I can’t leave you here like this.”

“You can’t? Or won’t?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it does. If it’s pity that you’re offering, you can keep it.”

“It’s not pity.” Chanyeol said in a low voice, choosing to fold the towel into a square instead of looking at Baekhyun. “I’m here because I want to be here.”

Baekhyun opened his good eye and knitted his brows, a subtle change in his expression that Chanyeol could only interpret as a concealed surprise. Baekhyun stared at Chanyeol in pensive silence, body slumped against the cool acrylic material of the bathtub under his feverish skin.

Finally, Baekhyun whispered, “Okay.”

Chanyeol’s eyes shot up defensively, ready to argue about whatever provocative words he had expected Baekhyun to utter before it settled into his mind that Baekhyun had only nodded amiably, acquiescing in a soft spoken way that both did and didn’t suit him.

“Okay.” Chanyeol mumbled back with a seed of distrust at how easy it was.

“Okay.” Baekhyun murmured again with no strength in his voice.

With measured movements, Chanyeol leaned forward and began dabbing the warm towel against Baekhyun’s dirty face, starting with the bumpy eye that could no longer open. He worked his way down to the rain of cuts along his cheekbones that led him towards the bridge of Baekhyun’s nose that almost seemed crooked under the layer of dried blood running down from his forehead, and finally reached the broken lip that was made thicker with coagulated blood along its perimeter.

And as he cleaned away the blood from Baekhyun’s protruding lips, he wondered how soft Baekhyun was under the hard exterior he wore. As his gentle strokes along the wounded area began to clean away the dark red that painted his mouth, Chanyeol wondered if Baekhyun realised how easily he could be hurt.

But he probably did, didn’t he? That was his plan, afterall.

Consumed by his own thoughts, his hand added slightly more pressure than it did before, pressing down on the swollen part of his lip. Baekhyun winced as the pain flared up, shutting his good eye as he tried to pull away. Chanyeol flinched away, instinctively wanting to throw the towel to the side but managing to grasp onto it just as it was about to fall out of his grip.

“Oh my god,” Chanyeol sputtered, “I’m sorry. Shit— are you okay? Did I—”

“It’s okay,” Baekhyun said with a weak voice.

“Are you sure—”

“Yeah. It’s okay, you don’t have to stop.”

“Why?” Chanyeol asked, “I just— I hurt you. You can’t tell me that—”

“But you’re not going to hurt me anymore, are you?”

The confidence in Baekhyun’s words gave Chanyeol pause. “Well, of course not.” he frowned, “But how can you know that? I mean, what if I—”

“If you wanted to hurt me, you’d have done it a long time ago. We’re here, aren’t we?”

“Yes, but—”

“I know you’re not going to hurt me, okay?” Baekhyun said, “I trust you.”

It should’ve been easy to let these words slip by, but in that moment it seemed as if those words had become tangible and weighed more than Chanyeol could ever carry.

With his knees still on the hard floor, he rocked back and let his weight rest on his ankles. “Why?” Chanyeol asked at last, voice barely above a breath.

It took Baekhyun a few seconds to answer. “Nobody who wasn’t a healthcare professional’s ever done this for me before.” he replied softly.

“That.. can’t be true,” Chanyeol chuckled self-consciously, “I mean, what about your mother? Or I mean— she had to have helped you at some point, didn’t she?”

Baekhyun averted his gaze as he locked his jaw. The room no longer smelt of a mix of secondhand smoke on clothes and lavender air fresheners, it reeked of the stench of guilt, the nauseating and permeating scent of regret over what had just been said.

Chanyeol’s chest began to constrict as his tongue went dry. The room was suddenly too bright and the silence too damning.

Chanyeol clenched his fists. There was a faint squelching sound from the wet towel in his hand. “Baekhyun?” he asked gingerly.

“Who knows?” Baekhyun said lightly.

That should’ve been the end of it. He should have picked up the towel and continued cleaning away the blood caking Baekhyun’s forehead, he should have washed the towel and gotten an ice pack for Baekhyun’s eye. Most of all, he should have kept his fucking mouth shut, but Chanyeol didn’t realise the words that were escaping from his lips until they were already out, and by then it had been too late. “Where is she?” he asked quietly.

Baekhyun kept silent for a long time before he looked back at Chanyeol again. This time, there was a spark in his eye that warned of something bigger waiting to erupt. “Who knows?” he said acutely.

Silence had intruded into the room like an unwanted guest. Chanyeol realised, in its vastness, his helplessness to make the situation better.

Still, he tried anyway.

“Baekhyun—”

“My mother whored out her love to the lowest bidder,” Baekhyun ruminated aloud with an unfocused look in his eye, staring through Chanyeol at a distant memory only he could see. His brows drew together slightly as his lips curled into a weak snarl, something that quivered with years of unearthed hurt.

His voice wavered as he spoke again, “And somehow I was always too poor to even submit my bid.” Baekhyun hesitated, “I don’t know where she is, but I know where she isn’t.” and then he paused again, letting his gaze drift down. “I always do.”

In that instant, Kyungsoo’s words came back to Chanyeol with a viciousness he never expected.

_“They say that his own parents abandoned him too.”_

If Baekhyun’s mother was absent, what about his father? Where was his father, if he wasn’t here looking after his son?

It took a long time for Chanyeol to gather the courage to ask, “What about your father?”

Baekhyun’s eye darted up to meet Chanyeol’s, and for just a split second, Chanyeol thought he saw fire raging in them. But in the next moment, just as all the defensiveness in Baekhyun’s body had deflated out of him, the look in his eyes mellowed, not into something soft and gentle, but a new understanding that had clicked into place.

“So you’ve heard about it, huh?” Baekhyun said flatly.

“Heard? Heard what?”

“About my parents,” Baekhyun said. He looked down as he spoke, a deceptively casual flick of his eye down, accompanied by the twitch of his lip. “It’s okay. I’m not offended. I don’t care if you did.”

“You don’t care?”

“I don’t.” Baekhyun confirmed. But even as he was saying the words, he kept his eye fixed on a stain on the hem of his shirt, staring at it without staring. It seemed to Chanyeol that the longer he stared at the maroon spot, the less tense the line of his jaw became. Baekhyun started to have a faraway gaze in his eyes and an insurmountable sadness twinkling in his eye, still crusted with blood on the side. He didn’t offer any explanation but Chanyeol was determined to get it out of him.

“Why not?”

The fog in Baekhyun’s eyes had cleared instantaneously with that question. His mouth pulled itself down in an uneven grimace as his eyes narrowed in for the slightest second. And everything came back to Chanyeol— all the dismissive words Baekhyun used with himself, all the non-committal deflections he gave as an answer.

“It’s hard to care about people you’ve never met.” Baekhyun said plainly.

Flashes of memories filled Chanyeol’s thoughts. Brief snapshots of his mother going through his homework with him patiently, a blinding light covered by chubby, stub-like fingers that were embedded with grains of sand as a deep voice called his name, the memory of running home with his sister to the fragrant smell of home cooked food on a cold autumn night.

Wasn’t this what every child should have had? Wasn’t this what childhood was supposed to be about?

And all of this was stolen from Baekhyun?

“Why haven’t they met you?” Chanyeol asked tightly, throat closing up, “Why haven’t they— why haven’t they _met_ you? I mean— aren’t they curious about you? Why don’t they care about you? You’re their son, aren’t you? And they don’t— they don’t even _care_ about you? Why don’t they? Why don’t they care about their son?”

“Sure they care about me.” Baekhyun laughed dryly, “My father cared enough about me to keep me happy with all the money he thought could buy a son a dad. Cared enough to keep me out of sight and out of his life.”

“And you know who he is?”

“Of course I do. He’s the only person I’m forbidden to meet.”

“Why?”

Baekhyun forced his mouth into a poor imitation of a smile. It was as if that was Baekhyun’s way of bridling his sadness, because how sad could you be if you were still able to smile? “Because when people have reasons to keep your existence a secret,” Baekhyun said softly, “You learn that you were the biggest regret they couldn’t right.”

It was the cool way that Baekhyun said it, with the slight waver in his voice, that broke Chanyeol’s heart.

And what could Chanyeol say to that? What _did_ he know about Baekhyun, anyway?

Chanyeol turned away sharply and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“I’m sorry that this happened to you.”

“Well,” Baekhyun murmured indifferently, “Don’t be.”

“No— but I am. I’m— I’m _angry_.”

“What’s the point of that? It doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.”

“No, it does.”

“Says who?”

“Says _me_ , damn it!” Chanyeol’s voice boomed in the quiet of the room. He stood up in rage and clenched his fists. Pink droplets oozed out of the towel and rolled down his finger like little coloured jewels, hanging onto his knuckles shakily before they fell away. Baekhyun leaned his head back with his breath caught, intrigued by the unadulterated anger spread through Chanyeol’s taut body. Chanyeol took in a few deep breaths, clenching his teeth together as rage seared through his veins. “It _does_ matter, okay? You matter!”

Baekhyun continued to stare up at Chanyeol, dazed. He frowned in confusion the best he could. “Why?”

“Because we’re friends, aren’t we?” Chanyeol’s voice broke in the middle of the sentence, but he laughed it off. A strangled laugh that sounded eerily similar to a sob.

Baekhyun’s frown eased up as something else replaced it— a newfound understanding, a quiet relief.

Hope.

“Is that what we are? Friends?”

“You said it yourself, didn’t you?” Chanyeol laughed wryly, “That you were whatever I said you were.”

Everything hinged on Baekhyun’s reply now. The tension in the air was palpable as they held eye contact, punctured only by Chanyeol’s slowing breaths and Baekhyun’s loud but indecipherable thoughts. Finally, Baekhyun cracked a smile at Chanyeol. It was small, but a real smile. “I did.”

Was it still fascination?

No, that wasn’t it. Not anymore.

Chanyeol slid his exam script into the pile of papers in the invigilator’s arm as she walked down the long row of tables, planting his most polite smile that gave him a boyish innocence. The woman smiled back at him with crinkles running from the corner of her baggy eyes before she walked on, leaving nothing but a whiff of the sharp perfume she wore in her wake.

Chanyeol folded his arms on the table and looked forward, noticing Kyungsoo turning around in his seat to look at him with his mouth skewed to the side. Kyungsoo shrugged and heaved an inaudible sigh at Chanyeol, a sign that the paper had not been as easy as he had hoped it would be. Chanyeol shrugged as well, mirroring the little frustrated slanted smile that Kyungsoo wore.

Kyungsoo’s crooked smile melted into a fond one as he turned forward, and then Chanyeol’s own smile promptly fell away.

It was only when Kyungsoo was fully facing the front of the long exam hall, where a few professors were counting the number of scripts collected, did Chanyeol look over his shoulder where Baekhyun was slumped in his own chair with his hands in his denim jacket. As if he could feel the heat of Chanyeol’s gaze, Baekhyun’s gaze slid over to meet Chanyeol’s.

While his face wasn’t as battered as it had been a week ago, there was still a purple circle over Baekhyun’s eye that was gradually fading away, accompanied by a series of shrinking black lines marring his pale skin. His lip had mostly healed by now, leaving a static dark line where it had been spilling red a few days ago.

And then, the corner of Baekhyun’s lips curved into a smirk. Not the cruel one he used to wear. It was different this time.

It was a knowing smirk. That they had a deeper relationship with each other, that they were no longer acquaintances, ships passing in the dark.

So, really, how could anyone blame Chanyeol for the way Baekhyun’s smirk crept onto his face as well?

And, really, so what if Chanyeol was clapping and laughing in the theatre? Did it really matter if he was the only one applauding the brilliancy of the film? Did it really matter if he was the only one in the theatre at all?

He was the only one who could point out, frame by frame, the new additions to the film. The director’s cut, the supercut, the whatever the fuck you wanted to call it.

He was the only one who could really imagine just how rotten the back alley smelt with its sloppily tied garbage bags, he was the only one who could smell the iron in the air, he was the only one who could feel the way that Baekhyun flinched under his touch.

The skin of Baekhyun’s arm was every bit as soft as the film made it look, and his fingertips were every bit as calloused as Chanyeol never knew it to be. He could still smell the scent of cigarette smoke that lingered on Baekhyun’s clothes, he could still feel the crusting blood under his fingertips.

Baekhyun’s mortality was the most beautiful feature he possessed, and Chanyeol liked him all the more for it.

And as Chanyeol watched himself wash the blood off of his hands, he wondered why that was even a problem. The blood on Baekhyun’s face made him stand out, did it not? The blood along his chin emphasised how pointed it was, just as how the blood along his lips served to highlight how full his lips were, never mind the uneven swelling.

Baekhyun’s blood on his hands emphasised how big his hands were, how capable they could be.

The film reel spun on and on and on and on until all that was on the screen were alternating flashes of black and white, interrupted by saturated orange lines that split the black screen into two and dots peppered across the white screen.

And still, Chanyeol clapped. He clapped and he clapped and he clapped because he had never seen anything more perfect than this.

The way that his crumpled paper landed around his feet like heaps of trash, the way that his fingers cut across the chilly night air against a background of blurry lights, the way that Baekhyun’s jaw ticked as he looked off to the side.

_“My mother whored out her love to the lowest bidder.”_

And after he clapped, and after his hand stopped throbbing from the pain of clapping it for a prolonged period, Chanyeol sat down again.

All alone in the empty theatre, the film reel started again.

Was it still fascination?

No, that wasn’t it. Not anymore. Chanyeol didn’t think it was, but at this point did it even matter anymore? All that mattered was that he liked the way he felt.

It felt good.

Days began to melt into a singular, incomprehensible stream of time. The air grew bitter and sharp with the constantly falling temperature and night seemed to wage war against the day, slowly claiming territory they had no right to.

Footsteps echoed in the long corridor of his university and his long shadow elongated with every thundering step he took through the empty space. With one hand on the strap of his sling bag, he walked forward with fluidity that belonged on a runway.

Things were changing around here.

During the day, Chanyeol was the average, unremarkable student that he always was. Always early to classes with his pencil case of multicoloured pens and highlighters, with his friend that he followed for years. He was the student in the front row of the lecture hall with a pen in his hand and his eyes on the professor, he was the student who was volunteering to present answers in tutorials for class participation points.

Except that his pen was no longer uncapped in class, and his hand was no longer sliding frantically across paper.

Just before he reached the door leading out of the building, there was a burst of movement from behind him. A flurry of footsteps roared behind as a flood of students came rushing out of a lecture theatre, with their humdrum existence pouring into space like trash onto mulberry silk and vicuna wool. With their incessant chatter that blended into a shrill ring, with their blessed ignorance about other people’s lives.

Except that Kyungsoo was no longer as loud as he used to be, no longer as demanding as he had always been.

And during the night, Chanyeol was exploring a new part of himself that he hadn’t known existed until now. He was running through empty train stations, illuminated by harsh white light, with his hand in Baekhyun’s smaller one and their laughter reverberating off the cracked tiles on the walls. He was sitting next to Baekhyun in front of a piano in one of the empty malls, watching Baekhyun coerce the piano into singing a song of grief that spiralled into something sinister.

Except that when he opened the door of his flat, the place was bathed in darkness and drowned by a blanket of silence.

He was dancing in the middle of Baekhyun’s living room, twirling and twirling in front of the crackling fire and Baekhyun taking a puff from the sofa. He was closing the diner menu and ordering the food he’d always wanted to eat without a single glance at its price, meeting the waitress’ flabbergasted wide eyes and drinking the approval twinkling in Baekhyun’s eyes.

Someone ahead held the door open for Chanyeol and he breezed through it without his gait ever faltering. As the sunlight outside rained down on him mercilessly, he lifted a single hand over his squinted eyes and scanned the groups of students walking all over the place. In pairs, in threes, in groups and all alone.

And there he was, standing outside the door with students still streaming behind him. They went around him as Moses once parted the Red Sea. He looked from one side and slowly gazed over the other, where the dropoff point was, and he began to walk again.

He was lowering the passenger side window to hang his arm taut, widening his fingers as if he could grasp all the stars in the sky in his palm and never let go. He was looking back at Baekhyun who only looked ahead with a crooked smile sitting on his face.

Was it still counted in days? Or would it be easier to count things in weeks now?

Still, the night continued its relentless attack on daytime. Every second, every minute, every hour was a new victory. It bled across the sky like an insatiable monster and people began to seek refuge earlier and earlier.

He was dancing in the middle of Baekhyun’s living room when Baekhyun offered him a drink from the cup he had refilled for himself. He was standing next to Baekhyun outside a twenty-four hour gaming station, waiting for Baekhyun to finish his smoke when Baekhyun passed over his half-smoked cigarette.

As he walked towards the little curved road where a sleek black car sat in waiting, Chanyeol allowed a smile to grace his lips as he tugged his bag higher on his shoulders.

Things were changing around here.

He was hesitant when he paused in mid-step and took the cool glass into his hand, peering into mahogany-coloured liquid that surrounded a large rock of ice that sat sturdily inside. He was nonplussed when he took the cigarette into his stubbier fingers, unsure of what to do next.

But when he put the glass to his mouth, the cigarette between his lips, all his hesitance, all his doubts—

They all vanished into a single breath of air.

It was starting to snow.

Chanyeol opened the door of the car and got inside without a hitch, tossing his bag to the backseats before reaching out to grab the door handle. As he did, he looked up and met Kyungsoo’s bewildered stare.

How incredible was it that the distance of many worlds could be encompassed in just a few metres? How incredible was it that the longer he held his friend’s stare, the more he realised that he didn’t recognise the man standing in front of him? How incredible was it to see all the unspoken questions clog up his friend’s face, and to know that he would never get any answers to them?

But he wasn’t there when Baekhyun opened another bottle for Chanyeol to try. He wasn’t there when Baekhyun made an offhand remark, an offer to let Chanyeol try something even stronger, something even better. He wasn’t there when Chanyeol smiled back at Baekhyun with the cup in his hand, with the stick between his fingers and accepted his generous offer.

Just what the fuck did he think he knew, anyway?

“Are you gonna shut the door or what?” Baekhyun asked boredly, resting his chin on his fingers.

Things were not changing around here. They already had.

Chanyeol pulled his arm back and the door slammed shut with a loud thud. The last thing he saw was Kyungsoo’s bespectacled face, frozen forever in a mix of horror and disbelief.

Was this what love felt like?

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere.”

Chanyeol turned to look at Baekhyun, unamused. “Stop messing around with me, Baekhyun. Why are we driving up this hill?”

Baekhyun remained unperturbed by the impatience in Chanyeol’s voice. Instead, he leaned his head to the other side where his hand hung on the steering wheel and looked ahead as if he had lost interest in the conversation already. “I wanna show you something.”

“What could _possibly_ be up here this late at night? It’s in the middle of winter too so don’t tell me there’s a bunch of flowers that you want to show me.”

Baekhyun scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Do I look like the kind of guy that would bring you flowers?”

Chanyeol said nothing and chose to cross his arms instead. “Then where are we going?”

“How about you shut your mouth and wait to find out for yourself?”

Chanyeol clenched his teeth and crossed his legs, angling his body towards the passenger-side window. The sky above was jet black with blots of white splattered across and thick and heavy clouds that could only be seen by their purple outline that looked almost surreal. With how cluttered the sky was, it was a miracle that Chanyeol even caught a glimpse of the waxen moon.

The road was relatively well-maintained for how isolated it was from the main part of the city, and occasionally Chanyeol would spot little pathways cleared by years of hikers flattening the ground until no grass could grow there. It looked, in the middle of the night, like a bald strip of soil that trespassed into snow that were dusted with bits of gray on the top.

With a smooth arc that led them to flatter ground, Baekhyun killed the engine and unbuckled his seatbelt. Then he took off the denim jacket that hung around his shoulders and got out of the car swiftly.

“What’re you doing?” Chanyeol yelled after Baekhyun, scrambling over the center console awkwardly. Baekhyun turned back wearing a puzzled frown on his face. “It’s freezing out there! Don’t you think you should at least keep your jacket on if you’re not wearing anything else?”

Baekhyun shrugged it off. “I don’t need it.”

Chanyeol considered this for a moment. “Will I need my jacket?”

The wind whistled as it rustled Baekhyun’s hair and from where Chanyeol was looking up, he could see goosebumps trail up Baekhyun’s skin all the way beneath the short sleeve of his black v-neck shirt.

“No.” Baekhyun shook his head once. “You won’t.”

Chanyeol was highly sceptical, although he began to peel off his own jacket as well. When he stepped out of the car, he was immediately hit by the biting chill of the air. More than taking off his jacket, he regretted stepping out of the car at all.

“Baekhyun?” Chanyeol called, looking around. As he turned his head, he saw the view that he had missed earlier.

From where he was standing with a hand on the car door and the other on the roof, his breath hitched as he saw a sea of twinkling lights that illuminated the city below. A mix of orange and yellow and white sparkled against the darkness like their own version of the milky way, all concentrated in a single place.

Chanyeol was so enamored by the sight that he had almost forgotten that he was alone until the wind called in his ear. Chanyeol shut the door and looked around again. “Baekhyun?” he called, walking away from the edge of the cliff and towards the row of barren trees that stood guard with only a narrow pathway in between. Chanyeol wrapped his arms around himself as he started into a slow jog, half-closing his eyes against the brittle wind.

When he had gone in deep enough, he first noticed Baekhyun’s silhouette standing at the end of the pathway. He widened his strides, breaking into a quick run to close the distance before he came to a halt next to Baekhyun. From where he came from, it was hard to understand why Baekhyun was standing still, but as he stood next to Baekhyun, he could see why almost immediately.

A few metres away from them lay an irregularly shaped piece of black ice that seemed to stretch over a large hole in the ground. It looked as if god himself had scraped out a large piece of land and covered it with a piece of ice that was still slightly damp on the surface. The ice, with its unmarked surface that was still glistening under the limited light seeping through the clouds, seemed so quintessential that Chanyeol thought that it must have been planted there by someone, although he knew it was not the case.

The more he studied the frozen lake, the more he realised that it wasn’t flat as he always thought frozen bodies of water would be. It had a very subtle arch as it ran away from him, a little inflated belly on the top of the hill fenced in by the skeletons of trees.

“Wow,” Chanyeol exhaled in awe, “this is really something. Is this what you wanted to show me?”

Baekhyun took a few steps forward without saying anything. This time, Chanyeol wrapped his hand around Baekhyun’s elbow and pulled him back. Baekhyun looked over his shoulder, furrowing his brows.

“Where’re you going?” Chanyeol asked. Worry poured into his voice, “Isn’t this what you wanted to show me? This is it, isn’t it?”

“I said that _I_ wanted to show you something, didn’t I?” Baekhyun shook off Chanyeol’s grip and laughed snidely. “Anyone could show this to you.”

“Then what is it—”

“Shouldn’t it be obvious by now, if you actually stopped to think about it, that there’s something else I wanted to show you?”

“And just what is it that—” Chanyeol stopped abruptly as his eyes wandered to the gleaming ice a few steps away from them, and he understood right away. “No.”

Baekhyun pivoted on his foot to face Chanyeol with a smile on his face, taking a step backwards towards the ice. “You got it.”

“Baekhyun, we shouldn’t.”

“Don’t be like that.” another step backwards. Baekhyun’s smile grew broader with child-like glee. “Don’t you wanna see what I want to show you?”

“Baekhyun, this is dangerous.” Chanyeol hissed through gritted teeth. His heart was racing as he took in the unbothered look on Baekhyun’s face, the unsympathetic aura that oozed off of him. It troubled Chanyeol. It troubled Chanyeol that Baekhyun could be so apathetic to his concerns. And yet, Baekhyun took another step back. “We don’t know how thick it is, we don’t know how safe it is to go on the ice.”

“So you don’t want to see it, then?” a deflection, another step.

“And what if we fall in?!” Chanyeol shouted, closing his hands into fists. Another step. “What if we both fall in, Baekhyun? And then what?!”

Baekhyun shrugged a shoulder as his gaze turned as cold as the air around them. The smile he wore just a minute ago slid off his face quickly. He stopped just a step away from the ice and stood with his arms hanging limply by his sides, shoulders drooping. Baekhyun moved his jaw with his lips sealed, staring at Chanyeol like he was a nuisance.

“Suit yourself,” Baekhyun said at last, before he took another step backwards. This time, one of his feet landed on ice. “I guess this is just who you are, isn’t it, Chanyeol?”

This time, Chanyeol was at a loss. “What?” he murmured more to himself, then to Baekhyun he said, “What’re you talking about?”

Another step backwards. Baekhyun was standing fully on ice now. “You’re a coward, Chanyeol.”

“I’m a coward?” Chanyeol parroted incredulously, “I’m trying to keep us safe!”

“Sure you are. _Of course_ you are.” Baekhyun took a step farther into the ice. “That’s what people like to say, isn’t it? I’m doing it for your own good, I’m doing this for the sake of the team.” another step back. “Except that the person they’re trying to convince aren’t the people they’re telling it to.”

“Baekhyun, get back here!” Chanyeol said frostily. Then, realising how harsh his tone had gotten, he shook his head and tried again. “Stop this nonsense, _please_.”

“Who’re you really trying to convince, Chanyeol?” Baekhyun took another step backwards. This time, a faint white line crawled away from his foot. “What are you really afraid of?”

“Baekhyun—”

Another step back. The line traced itself backwards, following Baekhyun. “Is this really how you want to live your entire life? Do you want to be told what to do all your life, huh? Do you need _your friend_ to baby you your entire life?”

“Baek—”

“Don’t do this, Chanyeol, it’s too dangerous!” Baekhyun spat contemptuously, taking another step. “Don’t do this, Chanyeol, it’s bad for your health! Don’t do anything unless I give you permission to!” another step. Chanyeol took an instinctive step backwards, suddenly frightened by the overwhelming animosity from Baekhyun.

“Stop it.” Chanyeol whispered pleadingly.

“This is how you live your fucking life, Chanyeol! You think you’re free of whatever chains your friend put on you, but the only person who’s been doing it to you is yourself! You’re a goddamn coward to your core!”

“Baekhyun!” Chanyeol roared. At once, the tension in Baekhyun’s face and body seeped out. His arms fell to his sides again and his body sagged as he stood relaxedly on the ice, holding eye contact with Chanyeol. It appeared, to Chanyeol, as if the hostility in his eyes had dissipated with the viciousness that was laced in his sneer, and suddenly Chanyeol found that he could breathe easier.

It appeared, to Chanyeol, that the madness had come to an end. Chanyeol cracked out a wobbly smile, “Come back here.” he said softly, “Please?”

And then, with nothing but ice in his voice, Baekhyun said, “Suit yourself.” before turning back and breaking into a skate.

“Goddamn it! Byun Baekhyun!” Chanyeol yelled, tugging on his hair with his hands curled into balls. He took in a shaky breath and shut his eyes, locking his jaw. The coldness of the air came back to him with a vengeance, making it difficult and painful to breathe in too much, too deeply. He tried to calm his breathing by counting his breaths, inhaling for a few seconds and exhaling for longer, and as he did, he debated with himself what he should do.

Should he go after Baekhyun? Or should he call for someone to pick him up from here?

Even if he could call someone, who _could_ he call? Kyungsoo, who didn’t have a car? Kyungsoo, whose mortified face Chanyeol could never bury? Or Jongdae, who was always busy with his school work? Jongdae, who had a heart of gold without any real means of doing good?

Chanyeol opened his eyes and huffed an angry breath. He had no real say in this, he had no real choice he could take.

With a vexed sigh, Chanyeol took off after Baekhyun, waddling cautiously on ice that traced his footsteps with intersecting white lines, on ice that gave away Baekhyun’s own path. The ice protested his awkward movements, creaking if he applied too much pressure on one foot or stamping its disapproval in a junction of white webs. Sometimes, Chanyeol thought he felt the ice push back against his foot. He thought he felt the ice bounce beneath his feet, wobbling and moving to accommodate his shifting weight. And whenever those moments came, Chanyeol told himself that it was only his imagination, because if it wasn’t it could only mean that the ice wasn’t thick enough.

Every foot forward added pressure for Chanyeol, who was starting to feel too hot despite the cold weather. If it wasn’t for the low humidity, Chanyeol thought he might have been capable of sweating buckets. His throat closed up and his chest seemed to be on fire in spite of the cold. His head was spinning with dread and the combined worry made every step forward heavier and harder to take. With every passing second, the wind begged him to turn back with increasing vigour, and although Chanyeol knew that he ought to take its wise advice, he soldiered on with half-closed eyes and a hand over his face as a shield against the wind.

Finally, he could see Baekhyun standing a distance away from him, waiting patiently with a slack posture. As he drew nearer, he could see that there was a pleased curve on the edges of Baekhyun’s pale lips.

“This had better be good, Byun Baekhyun.” Chanyeol growled, leaving nothing but a single foot of gap between them. Baekhyun beamed at Chanyeol and pointed to the sky with his index finger.

“See for yourself,” Baekhyun said happily. Chanyeol threw his head back and looked.

Even the sky was at Baekhyun’s command. As Chanyeol looked up, the clouds that obstructed their view of the sky skittered away, leaving a clear view of the night sky overhead. Now, Chanyeol could finally admire the beauty of the chalky moon. It had a yellowish hue around it, a halo that was too big for the moon to wear. All around the moon, stars flickered for their private audience. Against the pitch black sky, the stars shone brighter than Chanyeol had ever seen. Light cascaded down softly on them, and for a moment, Chanyeol believed that this was all for them. That the heavens doted on them enough to fulfill their desire to see something ethereal.

“It’s beautiful,” Chanyeol said softly, “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

If only he could live in this moment forever.

“How did you even find out about this place?” Chanyeol looked back at Baekhyun with a grin stretching across his face. “It’s—”

He felt it before he heard it. The ice shifting under his feet. The force of Baekhyun’s foot against the ice.

_Crack._

A thick web of white sped across the surface of the ice, breaking into smaller and thinner threads that seemed to go on endlessly. Chanyeol looked down at their feet with his mouth agape and heart starting to hammer against his ribcage.

“Baekhyun?” Chanyeol said stiffly, forcing himself to look at Baekhyun.

Baekhyun stood with one foot forward, taking up the space between them. He stood with a transfixed gaze on the cracking ice, with a growing smile that was cloying in its excitement. Baekhyun stomped on the ice again, and this time, the creak of the ice was ominous.

Chanyeol swallowed thickly, feeling his body turn to ice. His eyesight tunnelled. “Baekhyun, what are you doing?”

With his head tilted downwards, Baekhyun's gaze travelled up like a rusty pulley that could not be lifted in one go. Finally, when Baekhyun met Chanyeol’s gaze, Chanyeol could see it as clearly as he saw the sky seconds ago.

Trepidation smelt like fresh air.

Chanyeol saw a manic joy in those dark eyes, euphoric and ecstatic and crazed. In that moment, Chanyeol saw Baekhyun as he truly was. Chills ran up Chanyeol’s spine as his guts sank into an abyss, as his chest constricted painfully, as his mind went blank except for a single thought that consumed his entire body.

_RUN._

But before Chanyeol could turn around completely, before he could even take a step away from Baekhyun, Baekhyun had put his foot down again on the spot that had gone white with the intersection of different webs.

Then, everything collapsed.

In the time that it took for the ice under his feet to shatter, Chanyeol learnt that he could live forever. As his arms flew up and his body started to sink, Chanyeol learnt that time was relative only to the fear that you were experiencing. The more intense your fear was, the longer time seemed to stretch.

And in between the time it took for the ice under his feet to shatter and his feet to first meet water, Chanyeol learnt that he could live forever.

They went down in a splash that Chanyeol could neither hear or see. The only noise that resounded in his ear was the sound of his heart pumping furiously. As he sank farther into the water, as he became submerged by the waves of water that drowned him, Chanyeol gasped. Bubbles floated to the surface as he continued his journey down.

It took a few more seconds before Chanyeol realised that he was truly sinking, and that he would drown if he didn’t do something about it. Hurriedly, he forced his eyes open and pushed himself upwards with his arms, remembering to kick his legs a beat after. Light permeated the dark waters from the hole in the ice and cut a path in the water like a faded spotlight. As Chanyeol swam higher and higher, he could see specks of dirt floating in the water, illuminated only by the muted light that penetrated the water.

He broke the surface of the water with a loud gasp. Gelid water ran down his face, causing him to scrunch his nose as spikes ran through the veins in his face. His arms flailed around for something to grasp but with his eyes shut tightly, they continued to beat down on the troubled water surface, causing ripples to collide into each other and waves to rock against his body.

Chanyeol rubbed against his eyes aggressively, scanning the area around when he could finally open them. When he felt his teeth start to clatter, he clenched them and swam to the nearest piece of ice that he could reach. But the moment that he planted his hands on the ice and tried to pull himself up, the ice gave way. His hands stumbled into the water and threw him off balance for a frightening moment.

“Fuck,” Chanyeol muttered. His breaths were starting to quicken and there was no sign of Baekhyun around. “fuck, fuck, fuck!” he threw his fists into the water, creating a splash that hit his face. “Fuck!”

He could die here if he didn’t get out of the water. His body could go into shock. He could get hypothermia if he didn’t get out of here.

“Fuck!” Chanyeol screamed again, throwing his arms against the bumpy surface of the water.

He looked up at the sky and saw that the clouds had drifted in again, and all that he could see now was the sickly yellowish hue that peeked from behind coal-like clouds. Suddenly, he felt a wave of helplessness wash over him. The ice around was too weak for him to pull himself up on, and the water was starting to feel less and less cold.

The picturesque sky he loved so much had disappeared as well.

He was going to die here alone, and the last thing that he would see was a blurry image of the night sky.

He sniffled in frustration, resisting the urge to break down into tears. The more time he wasted, the closer he was to dying.

But what was he supposed to do? What _could_ he do? The ice would break if he so much as tried to push himself up on it. But there was no way he could get out of the water if he didn’t pull himself out. He didn’t know what else he could do to save himself. He didn’t know how he was supposed to get out of this. The more he thought about it the more helpless the situation became, and for the first time in a long time, Chanyeol desperately wished that there was someone who could tell him what to—

_“Think about it. Use your brain a little.”_

Chanyeol froze.

_“Why don’t you use that brain once in a while, Chanyeol? Or has it already rotted away?”_

_Suddenly, the dark sky brightened up as if sunrise had happened in the blink of an eye. The tumultuous water he was bobbing on was replaced by solid ground, and the stingingly sharp smell of the cold was chased out of the air by secondhand smoke wafting into his face._

_“Is this what you always do?”_

_Chanyeol blinked. He looked down to the pot of stew bubbling in front of him, to the ashtray that would soon have smatterings of cigarette ashes._

_“Do you always run to others for answers to questions you’re too lazy to think about?”_

_“It’s warm,” Chanyeol deflected. He looked up to the sun in awe and drank in the heat greedily. Baekhyun scoffed, leaning forward to tap his cigarette into the ashtray, like he did before._

_“Of course it is,” Baekhyun said, “It’ll be even warmer soon.”_

_“That’s nice.”_

_“You’re going to die, you know?” Baekhyun added nonchalantly, glancing at Chanyeol with disinterest. “That’s fine with me, of course. There’s nothing to be done if you want to die.”_

_“I don’t want to die,” Chanyeol protested._

_“Doesn’t seem like it to me.”_

_“And what do you expect me to do?” Chanyeol snapped, dropping the utensils in his hands. They fell onto the table noisily. “I’ve tried to get out of the water! I tried! But it doesn’t work! What else do you want me to do? What else am I supposed to do over here?”_

_“You’re supposed to use your brain, that’s what.”_

_“Use my—” Chanyeol rolled his eyes, “Do you seriously think I didn’t?”_

_“I don’t think, Chanyeol. I know you didn’t.” Baekhyun said sharply, “Because if you did, you wouldn’t still be swimming and thinking about how good your life was or wasn’t. You’d be running back to land, Chanyeol. You’d be far, far away from dying in a few minutes.”_

_“And how do you suppose I get on ice that keeps breaking when I so much as put my hands on it?!”_

_“It’s obviously going to break. Are you stupid? The ice around is weak even without you putting all your weight on it.”_

_“The..” Chanyeol paused thoughtfully, “what?”_

_“The what?” Baekhyun mocked with insolence dripping from his voice, “Why don’t you come up with some answers for once in your life?”_

A wave swept Chanyeol to the side, closer to the new edge of the ice. With that, the moment had been broken. Chanyeol inhaled shakily with panic starting to sink in. What Baekhyun told him seemed important in getting him out of here, but what—

_“The ice around is weak even without you putting all your weight on it.”_

He rubbed a cold hand down his face and looked at the ice with jagged edges. Suddenly, it became apparent to him that he had been putting all his weight on a single point. If the ice was too thin to support his weight vertically, he would have to spread out his weight and climb on it horizontally.

And then, Chanyeol started to kick his legs frantically. He kicked and he kicked until he felt himself in a good position to crawl parallel onto the ice. He kicked and he kicked until he managed to get his elbows onto the ice without it crumbling under his weight. He kicked and he kicked and he pulled himself across the ice until his belly was sliding onto the ice, and then he kept pulling himself away.

It wasn’t until his feet were safely out of the water that he collapsed onto the ice with his chin just grazing the surface, and burst into a bout of tears. If he thought that he had been overwhelmed by despair before, he thought wrong. The amount of relief that flooded every fibre of his being made Chanyeol realise just how much emotion a human could experience at any point of their life. He felt as suffocated by the relief as he felt liberated. He was crying tears of joy along with tears of fear after his near brush with death. It was difficult to be alone after such a traumatising experience, but he didn’t know who he could turn to for comfort.

Baekhyun? The same person who put him through this? Kyungsoo? The person who would be the first to crucify him for hanging out with Baekhyun? Jongdae? The person who could never understand where he was coming from?

He was alone when he thought he would die, but he was still alone here. He was more alone now than ever, and he cried harder for all the loneliness that unveiled itself like a rot that had festered for years. He cried for the first time in years, and he cried harder than he remembered ever crying.

For a short moment, Chanyeol wondered if tears would ever stop leaking from his traitorous eyes. But just as good things eventually come to an end, bad things had to, too. And after he was done, Chanyeol wiped away the fresh tear tracks with his damp hands and started crawling again, too afraid to stand up.

He crawled for what seemed like hours. Chanyeol found out the hard way that when you were pulling yourself forward on your stomach, even the shortest distance felt like a full marathon. By the time he saw solid ground again, he felt a fresh wave of tears prickle his eyes and took a moment to rub at his eyes, biting back the deep relief flooding his insides before he began moving with renewed vigour.

When he closed the distance, he found Baekhyun lying on his back, breathing shallowly. He had his eyes closed serenely, as if he hadn’t just caused them to fall into freezing water, as if he hadn’t just left Chanyeol for dead. He looked so calm that Chanyeol would have thought he was merely taking a nap, if it wasn’t for how his teeth were clattering violently in his mouth, if it wasn’t for how his body shivered aggressively, if it wasn’t for how Baekhyun’s hair and clothes were matted to his skin.

Chanyeol felt his blood pumping in his veins, his heartbeat drumming in his head. Immediately, with a surge of energy, he pushed himself onto his feet and ran clumsily. His numb legs staggered on the way to Baekhyun, but all Chanyeol could focus on was Baekhyun.

Baekhyun, Baekhyun, Baekhyun.

He climbed on top of Baekhyun, straddling the man before he gripped Baekhyun’s shirt with both hands and pulled him up unforgivingly. Baekhyun opened his eyes slowly.

“Ah,” Baekhyun said, “you made it.”

Baekhyun, Baekhyun, Baekhyun Baekhyun Baekhyun BaekhyunBaekhyunBaekhyun _Baekhyun!_

You fucking bastard.

Chanyeol pulled one hand away and closed it into a tight fist. Resentment shook his whole body.

_You fucking bastard._

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t punch you!” Chanyeol screamed into Baekhyun’s blank face. He retracted his hand farther away to give more weight to his threat. “ _Give me one fucking reason!_ ”

“I can’t do that,” Baekhyun said simply, collectedly. Baekhyun blinked at Chanyeol, unsurprised by the vitriol washing out of him in waves.

“And why not! Why not!” Chanyeol yelled, “I’m gonna beat the fuck out of you if you don’t! Give me one fucking reason, you fucking bastard!”

Spittle flew onto Baekhyun’s face. Baekhyun lifted a steady hand to wipe it away with aplomb.

“I can’t do that,” Baekhyun said again, lowering his hand. His head hung back as Chanyeol pulled his shirt higher. His whole body was limp under Chanyeol. There was no sense of urgency in his demeanour, there was nothing about Baekhyun that hinted he was even aware that Chanyeol was angry at him besides the words he was saying. “you have the right to punch me in the face and tell me what an asshole you think I am.”

Baekhyun’s words were a signal that Chanyeol’s own traitorous mind obeyed. The same words he told Baekhyun months ago came rushing back to him with clarity.

_“I don’t have the right to punch you. That's battery and assault. It’s against the law. And I don’t want to punch you.”_

Chanyeol’s mouth snapped shut with a harsh _click_ of his teeth. He dropped his fist in favour of grabbing Baekhyun’s shirt with both hands, giving him a hard shake.

“I could have died! I could have died, you fucking bastard!” Chanyeol shouted hysterically, shaking Baekhyun as he spoke. Baekhyun’s head snapped back pliantly like a doll, but his guarded eyes were impenetrable. There was no way of telling what Baekhyun was thinking about. Chanyeol took in a deep breath. “I thought I was going to die! You left me there! You left me there to die you piece of shit!”

“But you didn’t.”

“And what if I did?!”

“But you didn’t.”

“And what if I _did_ , Baekhyun?! What if I died there?!”

“I would’ve pulled you out, Chanyeol.” Baekhyun said plainly, as if the answer had been obvious all along.

But it took Chanyeol a long moment to realise what Baekhyun had meant.

Baekhyun didn’t mean that he would have pulled Chanyeol out before he drowned. Baekhyun didn’t mean that he would have saved Chanyeol before he died.

Baekhyun meant that he would have pulled Chanyeol’s dead body out of the water if he hadn’t made it out himself.

Chanyeol let go of Baekhyun’s shirt with disbelief. As Baekhyun fell back, his head made a dull thud as it hit the ground.

“Why..” Chanyeol mumbled weakly, “Why did you bring me here, Baekhyun?”

Baekhyun looked back at Chanyeol with his pallid face and unfeeling eyes. “I wanted to show you something.”

“What was it you wanted to show me?” he asked quietly. Baekhyun stared back wordlessly.

Somewhere between Baekhyun’s dark, soulless gaze and Chanyeol’s own whirring thoughts, something finally clicked. It came in a rush.

And then, Chanyeol understood.

 _“I said that_ I _wanted to show you something, didn’t I? Anyone could show this to you.”_

Baekhyun’s eyes— so detached, so sterile— upheaved his stomach. Chanyeol believed that Baekhyun had brought him out to watch the stars. Chanyeol believed that Baekhyun wanted to show him something special. But that wasn’t what Baekhyun had in mind— it wasn’t even close.

Chanyeol fell over to the side and started dry heaving. He felt his entire stomach do flip flops over and over again, and he felt it tie itself into knots that squeezed itself in irregular intervals that jolted his entire body. The prickling sensation at his eyes became stinging as he opened his mouth again, trying to throw up something that wouldn’t budge.

How had he ever ended up here?

Chanyeol sniffled miserably, wiping his eyes with the back of his wrists. He looked over his shoulder at Baekhyun, lips quivering in fear and shock. “What was the point of it?” Chanyeol asked under his breath. It came out in uneven tones, as a shaky exhale of breath. As Baekhyun stared back at him uncompassionately, Chanyeol felt anger curl inside him, red hot and ready to strike. His fingers dug into cold soil as he gritted his teeth. “You sick bastard!” he barked, “You nearly killed me, god damn you! What was the fucking point of it?!”

Indifferent as ever, Baekhyun pushed himself up on his elbows. “Don’t you get it?”

“Get what—”

“All this time you’ve been taking time for granted, and you’ve been wasting it,” Baekhyun said evenly, “You would never have known how free you truly are to do anything you want in life, until you’re living on borrowed time.”

Baekhyun’s words loitered in the air like an uninvited guest, long enough for Chanyeol to finally let it sink into his head.

Baekhyun nearly killed him. Baekhyun nearly killed him to prove a point. Baekhyun nearly killed him. He was now living on borrowed time.

Baekhyun nearly killed him. Baekhyun nearly killed him. Baekhyun nearly killed him.

Chanyeol’s eyes snapped back to meet Baekhyun’s. He gripped a handful of soil in his palm and threw it at Baekhyun.

“Fuck you!” he spat, “Do you think this is funny? You nearly killed me, Baekhyun! I could have fucking died! There wouldn’t even have been borrowed time if I died, you son of a bitch!”

“But now there is.”

“No fucking thanks to you!”

“Would it have changed anything if you didn’t?” Baekhyun sighed, pushing himself fully up now. He dusted his hand to the side. Specks of brown fell between them like snow. “You would’ve continued living like a dead man if I hadn’t done that. If you hadn’t pulled yourself out, there would be nothing to say. In both cases, you were dead anyway.”

“And what is it to you?! Who even cares how I live my life?!”

“Who even cares if a dead man dies?” Baekhyun dug his pocket and fished out his cigarette box, now soggy and drenched, still dripping water at the sides. Baekhyun grimaced as he threw it on the ground. “Now that you know you could die at any moment, hopefully you will start living.”

Baekhyun turned, about to leave, when Chanyeol said spitefully, “And what have you done in your life, huh? What have you done that makes your life so worthwhile?”

Without turning around, Baekhyun replied, “My life is a stain on my father’s perfect record.” he turned just enough for Chanyeol to see the small, unhappy smile on Baekhyun’s pale face. Chills shot down his spine as the hairs on his arms stood. “And even god won’t take me away until I say that I’m done.”

All along, Chanyeol had always thought that Baekhyun’s mortality was his most beautiful trait. He always thought it was a deep secret only he had discovered, stumbled upon. How wrong he had been from the start, because Baekhyun had always known it too. He knew that his mortality was his most beautiful trait, and he’d been using it all his life.

Baekhyun was a mad man who was defying god himself.

And just as Kyungsoo’s dismay was forever etched into his memory, so was the quiet defiance in Baekhyun’s words, accompanied by the unhinged, lopsided grin sitting on that pair of lips that Chanyeol always admired so much.

What _was_ love supposed to feel like, anyway?

The ride back was silent as Chanyeol fixed his gaze out of the passenger-side window, cocooned in his jacket. Lights seemed to run together in a continuous line that occasionally splintered into different colours, but they were all the same to him.

Chanyeol’s head was empty with nothing but the single heavy thought that he could have died in the lake.

The car rolled to a stop before Chanyeol realised that he was back home. With his body on autopilot, he unbuckled his seatbelt and pushed the car door open with fatigued hands. As he was about to take a step out of the car, a familiar denim jacket fell onto his lap. Chanyeol cocked his head to the side, examining the jacket before he could place it.

He picked it up with a quizzical frown perched on his face. “I don’t understand.”

Baekhyun nodded his head at the jacket. “Keep it.”

“Why?”

“I’m giving it to you.”

“But why?” Chanyeol shook his head. Baekhyun leaned to the side with a thoughtful look crossing his features.

“Because it suits you.” Baekhyun finally said.

If Chanyeol had more strength in him, he might have put up a protest. But as it was, the events of the night had drained him of everything except the desire for a hot shower before throwing himself onto his bed for a well deserved rest.

Secretly, a small part of him was touched by the sentiment.

“Thanks,” Chanyeol said without any real feeling. He hung the jacket over his shoulders and slipped his hands into the pockets and found that there was something metallic inside. Curious, he picked it out of the pocket and scrutinised it under the dim light provided by the street lamp ahead. “This is your credit card.” Chanyeol concluded.

“You can keep that as well.”

“No, I can’t.” Chanyeol said, “I can’t keep your credit card, Baekhyun. This isn’t even like—” he shook his head fervently and thrusted the card at Baekhyun. “I can’t keep this.”

“You can’t? Or won’t?”

“I won’t.”

“Then that’s too bad, because you are.”

“What am I even gonna do with this, Baekhyun?” Chanyeol ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “I can’t go around using your card, that’s illegal. That’s— I don’t know, fraud or something.”

“It’s illegal only if you stole it from me. But you’re not, are you?”

“No, but—”

“Then keep it. Use it to get yourself a haircut or better clothes or something.” Baekhyun waved a hand, and then he turned back to the windshield, signalling the end of the conversation. Chanyeol wasn’t sure that Baekhyun was right, but he was too exhausted to continue the argument.

Still, Chanyeol waited a beat longer, just to see if Baekhyun would change his mind, but he didn’t. Quietly, Chanyeol pocketed the card and got out of the car.

Just before he closed the door, Chanyeol bent down with a hand on the roof of the car. “Thanks, I guess.” he said softly.

Baekhyun’s eyes widened minutely before he schooled it back into its nonchalant expression again. That was all the acknowledgement that he was going to get. Chanyeol shut the door and watched as the car drove away, closing his fingers around the sleek edges of the metallic card in his pocket.

The journey back to his flat felt much longer than he remembered it being. Chanyeol’s half-lidded eyes were closing as he dragged his feet to the door of his flat, fumbling for the keys in his jeans before he heard something unusual from the flat.

The TV was on.

Chanyeol pressed his ears to the door and listened. There was no mistake, the TV was on.

Chanyeol opened the door slowly, peeking in before he set a foot through the gap. While most of the flat was cloaked in darkness, the living room was lit up by the TV, and from where he stood, Chanyeol could see Jongdae’s tired face leaning against a pillow.

The door creaked as Chanyeol pushed it open wider. Immediately, Jongdae pulled his body upright, looking towards the door blearily.

“Chanyeol?” he said, rubbing his eyes lethargically. “Is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” Chanyeol closed the door quietly, toeing off his wet shoes and socks.

Jongdae scooted over on the sofa and patted the seat next to him. “What time is it?”

“Late.”

“I’ll bet it is,” Jongdae laughed softly. Chanyeol sat on the sofa next to Jongdae and as he lowered his body, his weight squeezed water out of his damp clothes with a sickening squish. Jongdae moved away, taken aback. “You’re soaked,” he commented, “your clothes are all wet. And look at your hair. What happened? Did you go swimming in your clothes or something?”

 _I nearly drowned, Jongdae,_ Chanyeol thought. “Something like that.” Chanyeol said instead.

“All right then, keep your secrets.” Jongdae teased, poking a playful finger into Chanyeol’s cold cheeks as they laughed softly together. Jongdae leaned into Chanyeol’s side, wrapping his arms around Chanyeol’s and resting his head on Chanyeol’s shoulder.

“Your clothes are gonna get wet too.”

“Then I’ll just change out of them later. It’s no biggie.”

Chanyeol sighed fondly, looking at the top of Jongdae’s hair. He always had a soft spot for Jongdae and it was nice to see that nothing had changed. After some hesitation, Chanyeol let his head rest on Jongdae’s. It was a familiar position to the both of them. They used to fall asleep watching TV like this and would wake up when Kyungsoo found them late at night with the TV still on. Kyungsoo would nag for a little while with an austere crease between his brows but he’d always climb onto the sofa with them in the end.

Oh, how times had changed.

“I’ve missed this,” Jongdae admitted quietly, “I’ve missed seeing you around.”

There was a pang in Chanyeol’s chest that lingered too long. “Me too.”

“Where have you been, Chanyeol?”

Chanyeol opened his eyes reluctantly, staring at the TV without watching it. “Not here.”

“I know,” Jongdae laughed sadly.

“Are you angry?”

“No.” a pause, “Should I be?”

Chanyeol pondered on the question. “No,” he said at first, then thinking better of it, he said, “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Do I want to know?”

“I don’t think so.”

Jongdae untangled himself from Chanyeol to study his friend’s eyes. There was wistfulness in his downturned lips as he sighed resignedly.

“You know that you can always talk to me about anything, right?”

“I know.” Chanyeol said. Sensing that Chanyeol wasn’t going to elaborate, Jongdae offered a faint smile that Chanyeol found hard to reciprocate. Instead, he looked down at the space between their legs and put a hand in the pocket of his newly acquired denim jacket, wrapping his fingers around the cool card. Chanyeol cleared his throat. “Is Kyungsoo angry?”

This question caught Jongdae off guard. He averted his gaze momentarily. It was a quick movement of his eyes, but Chanyeol caught it all the same. “No. I don’t think so.”

This time, it was Chanyeol who was studying Jongdae’s eyes. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Jongdae said. He opened his mouth to elaborate but no words came out. Jongdae frowned to himself, as if he was berating himself inside, and tried again. “I don’t think he’s _angry._ I think he’s been sad.”

“Oh.” Chanyeol ran his thumb down the curved corners of the card, deciding if Kyungsoo was really sad, as Jongdae was telling him, or if Kyungsoo was irate. “Is he really?”

“Yeah, Chanyeol. He’s been pretty lonely without you. I mean— the both of you did everything together, and now..”

Jongdae didn’t need to explain what he meant for Chanyeol to understand. Chanyeol nodded dazedly as he flicked the card in his pocket and ran his thumb across the rotating lengths of the card.

“I see.”

Jongdae nodded grimly. “You know, I was thinking that we could do something to cheer him up. We could cook dinner for him, since he’s usually the one cooking for us. It’ll be like old times, right?”

Chanyeol considered this idea for a moment. “Okay.”

He stopped moving the card in his pocket and held onto it tightly as he returned Jongdae’s effulgent smile.

It was too warm for it to be winter. It could have been any other autumn day, but Chanyeol knew where he was when his eyes started to focus and he found himself with a pair of chopsticks in one hand and a spoon in the other. From the spoon’s concaved body, Chanyeol could see his inverted reflection staring back at him.

When he looked up at the sky with half-lidded eyes, he could see the curious sun playing a game of hide and seek. Chanyeol couldn’t say that the sun was very good at it, but its friends tried to help it by gathering around, although it was chastised by the wind for loitering around one spot for too long. Fluffy clouds began to disperse and break up into white tufts, and white tufts faded into sparse lines of cotton along the sky.

Then, a ribbon of gray flew into his vision, disappearing as Icarus did when he flew too close to the sun.

Chanyeol already knew who else there was. He squared his shoulders and let his gaze follow the gray trail across the table where Baekhyun was blowing out smoke from the delicate ‘o’ of his mouth. Baekhyun’s gaze flickered to Chanyeol before he pulled the cigarette farther away and relaxed into his seat, reaching forward for the cup of black coffee.

They shared a companionable silence for a long moment, admiring the groups of students walking across the campus with their cheshire cat smiles and distant laughter.

“It’s you again,” Chanyeol commented, “is this a dream?”

“What else could it be?”

Chanyeol nodded once while he placed his utensils on the table on each side of the hot stone pot in front of him with steam blowing back into his face every now and then. Baekhyun glanced down into his coffee before he took a cautious sip.

“I thought about it,” Chanyeol said in a level voice, “about what you said the last time when I asked you why you were here— in my dream.” Baekhyun pulled the cup away and gave it a slow swirl, letting the dark liquid run close to the rim. He gave no indication that he heard Chanyeol, but Chanyeol knew that Baekhyun was simply waiting, so he continued. “You said that it had to do with the question that I wasn’t asking you. I thought about it, and now I wanna ask you.”

Baekhyun sighed softly, fatigued. Chanyeol took this as his signal to carry on.

“What do you want from me?”

Baekhyun continued staring at his coffee for what felt like an eternity to Chanyeol. His cigarette continued to burn away while the breeze gently ruffled their hair, causing stray locks of hair to fall onto their faces. Chanyeol pushed his hair back, but Baekhyun sat still in his seat without care about his appearance.

Finally, Baekhyun turned his head to the side where the campus greenery laid. “That’s still not the question you really want to ask me, Chanyeol.” he said quietly. His voice was as dull as the look in his eyes, and Chanyeol flinched as if he had done something wrong.

Maybe he had.

“Then what is it? Can’t you tell me what I should say?”

“I can’t tell you that.” Baekhyun shook his head. He reached forward and tapped the cigarette into the ashtray before leaning back again. “You can’t keep seeking validation for the things you already want to hear, Chanyeol. It isn’t fair.”

“I don’t understand.” Chanyeol murmured.

“Then I can’t help you.”

Chanyeol worried his lip between his teeth, looking away, disheartened. He stood up slowly and slung his bag over his shoulder, turning to leave. Chanyeol was about to take a step away when something in him held him back, because it felt as if this was the final chance to ask something. He was standing on the precipice of answers and if he fell off, there was no coming back.

Chanyeol turned half-way. Baekhyun was still drinking his coffee sullenly.

“Can I at least ask who you are?”

“Why do you want to ask me that?” Baekhyun flicked the brown body of his cigarette. White confetti flew off from the butt. “You already know the answer to that.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“Because it’s the truth,” Baekhyun laughed cuttingly. “Where do you think we are, Chanyeol? Look around you, the answers are all in here.”

Chanyeol spun around, looking. But all he saw were faceless heads attached to bodies of varying shapes and sizes. A flock of birds flew across the skies, calling to each other as they did. Behind him, a group of students laughed as they entered the canteen. The door cried as they pulled it open, and it sighed contentedly as it swung shut behind them.

There was nothing here that Chanyeol hadn’t already seen. How could it be that the answers were all here?

“I don’t know who you are,” Chanyeol said miserably, “I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t know what you want.”

“Then how can I tell you what you want to hear?” Baekhyun replied. “How can you tell someone what they want, when even they don’t even know what they want?”

Chanyeol gawked at Baekhyun. “Now you’ve lost me.”

“Can’t lose something you never had.”

“No, I— I knew what we were talking about earlier.”

“Did you?”

“Yes,” Chanyeol insisted, throwing emphasis on the word. “We were talking about you, Baekhyun. We were talking about you withholding all the answers from me.”

“No, we weren’t.” Baekhyun said. He lifted up the coffee cup and emptied it into his mouth before crushing it in his hand. “We were talking about you, Chanyeol. We always were.”

Chanyeol tried to think back to the conversation that they had been having and found himself more confused than ever. He’d been so sure that the conversation was about Baekhyun all along. That he had been asking Baekhyun who he was, that he had been asking Baekhyun what he wanted from him. How could Baekhyun have misunderstood their conversation so deeply as to interpret it like that? How could Baekhyun really believe that their conversation had been about _Chanyeol_ all along?

Baekhyun took a brief look at the bewilderment on Chanyeol’s face before carding a hand through his hair that fell back slowly in waves. “It’s like I said before, Chanyeol. We all have parts of ourselves we’d prefer not to know about. Honesty is the most underrated value we hold ourselves accountable for, especially when it involves what we want.”

The music was still booming and the reel was still spinning, but there was something that Chanyeol was beginning to notice.

There was something missing in there.

It was still the same great piece of art that he’d always admired. So flawlessly shot, perfectly edited and beautifully etched into little pieces of squares that would be kept forever. But there was a niggling feeling that it could have been improved on. It could be made _better._

But that would also imply that the film, in all its present beauty, couldn’t be called _perfect_ anymore, could it? It would just be great, as most things were. It would just be great, as people praised things they never gave more than a second thought to.

But it wouldn’t be _perfect._

And that just simply wouldn’t do, would it?

Jongdae cleared the evening a week later of any work and commitments to join Chanyeol in preparing dinner. With their less experienced cooking skills, they settled on preparing something more straightforward than Kyungsoo would usually do. Three plates of kimchi fried rice with a little sunny side up egg to top it off with some miso soup on the side took a little over an hour for the both of them, but it was a forgotten kind of fun that Chanyeol had with Jongdae. It was harmless fun when he teased Jongdae’s irregularly shaped eggs, and it was harmless fun when Jongdae sprinkled too much pepper in the rice.

For a little over an hour, Chanyeol remembered what it was like to laugh without feeling like something bad was around the corner.

And it would have been a nice night that Chanyeol would like to remember in the future if Kyungsoo hadn’t came back with a baffled downward tug on his mouth, with a displeased narrowed eyes going back and forth between the food on the table, Jongdae’s dimpled smile and Chanyeol’s wary expression.

“Kyungsoo!” Jongdae chirped, wiping his wet hands on his pants. “Glad you made it back earlier today! Go and wash up or something, we’ll get the soup out.”

“What is this?” Kyungsoo said mutedly. He dropped his bag on the floor but didn't make a move to step forward. His eyes were distrustful as they landed on Chanyeol eventually and didn’t look away.

“It’s dinner,” Chanyeol said, equally quiet.

“Guys?” Jongdae said. Enthusiasm seeped out of his voice and his smile as he looked between them. “Kyungsoo?”

“I see that,” Kyungsoo said with thinly veiled hostility, “I meant what’s the special occasion that his highness, Park Chanyeol, had to grace us with his presence?”

Chanyeol looked away sharply while Jongdae drew in a soft gasp.

“Kyungsoo—”

“Do you really think that you can just write off months of brushing us off like this? With _dinner?_ ”

“Do Kyungsoo!” Jongdae cut in.

“What?” Kyungsoo said, “You _know_ it’s true, Jongdae! We’ve talked about this!”

Chanyeol looked to Jongdae. “You said he wasn’t angry.” Chanyeol said, barely above a breath.

Jongdae looked helplessly between them as Kyungsoo gaped openly at Jongdae. “You told him I wasn’t angry?”

“What else was I supposed to tell him?” Jongdae cried pitifully, throwing his hands down beside him.

“The _truth,_ maybe?”

“What truth?” Jongdae asked.

“That he’s being completely stupid!” Kyungsoo’s voice boomed in the small room. Jongdae took an instinctive step backwards, moving his hands forward defensively. Chanyeol’s eyes snapped to Kyungsoo’s reddening face in silence. Kyungsoo took a deep breath, flaring his nostrils as he glared at Chanyeol with his face pinched in frustration. “You’re such an asshole, Chanyeol. Do you seriously think that hanging out with Baekhyun makes you cool? Do you really think that he even cares about you? Are you crazy? He’s just using you for his fun!”

As Chanyeol held Kyungsoo’s stare, he imagined himself standing in front of his friend. He imagined the way that Kyungsoo would look up at him with his head tilted upwards, with his strong jaw tensed up. He felt a strange feeling surge through his body as he imagined himself staring back at his friend with limp arms at his side, with a numbing calm washing through his mind.

“Stop it, Kyungsoo!” Jongdae said angrily. Kyungsoo paid him no attention. The muscles in his jaw twitched as he continued.

“All you are is a new toy for him to play with and when he’s done— not _if,_ but _when_ he’s done— he’s gonna toss you out! Just like he always does!”

And as the coldness spread from his head to his toes, he imagined the way that he would lift his arms slowly. He imagined the way that Kyungsoo would look startled by the gentle warm palms that cupped his face the way a lover would, and he imagined the way that his thumbs would swipe along Kyungsoo’s tanned skin tenderly. He imagined the way that Kyungsoo’s rotten mouth would fall open in surprise, the way that Kyungsoo’s hateful eyes would widen in shock.

“Kyungsoo—”

“And then what are you gonna do, huh? Do you think that it’s okay for you to just come back to us when he doesn’t want you around him anymore?”

As the calm washed out of his body, he felt something else— something stronger— engulf him. It was an electrifying feeling of something exploding from his heart, something that, in spite of its forceful birth, washed through his veins like realisation dawning on him. He imagined the way that his hands would slide down Kyungsoo’s heart-shaped face, outlining the shape of his strong neck. He imagined the way that his hands would rest around the crook of Kyungsoo’s neck with his fingers curved around them loosely.

“Kyungsoo, stop it!” Jongdae yelled, stomping forward to grab Kyungsoo by his shoulders. Jongdae gave him a forceful shake, tearing Kyungsoo’s heated gaze away from Chanyeol for a split second to push Jongdae away.

“Why?!” Kyungsoo said, pointing to Chanyeol with an accusing finger. “Don’t you think it’s time that he heard the truth?! Aren’t you sick of his bullshit by now?!”

And then, the burning started. Energy surged through him as he imagined the way his fingers would slowly close in around Kyungsoo’s skin, the way that his fingers would dig into Kyungsoo’s neck. He imagined the terror that would seize his friend when he realised what was happening, he imagined the way that Kyungsoo’s fingers would try prying his away. He imagined the way Kyungsoo would gag as his airpipes were slowly being crushed, he imagined the way that Kyungsoo’s eyes would water and the way his face would pale.

He imagined the way that Kyungsoo would struggle in his grip with a broken croak as the fire in his eyes would die out, and Chanyeol couldn’t help the way that his hands closed into fists. He couldn’t help the way that his fingernails dug into his palm, he couldn’t help the twitch at the corner of his lips.

He couldn’t help his desire to strike his friend and watch the way he would tremble in fear.

“You’re making him angry!” Jongdae said, “You’re making him angry like you always do!”

His body was strung tight like a violin string ready to snap, and by god how _good_ would it feel to see Kyungsoo scared for once?

How good would it feel to see Kyungsoo afraid of _him_ for once?

_Suddenly, Chanyeol was back in that autumn day with the clear skies and a group of students laughing as the door creaked behind him. Suddenly, Chanyeol was clutching onto the strap of his sling bag with Baekhyun looking at him with a cigarette between his fingers and a trail of smoke waving in thin lines away from his face. Suddenly, Baekhyun was leaning forward on the table with a sickening grin spreading across his face._

_“Because it is. That’s just the way you are. You’re a people pleaser. You want to make people happy with you, even if it’s at the expense of your own happiness. That’s why you’re never happy.”_

_“I’m not unhappy.” Chanyeol snapped._

_“And you’re not angry at Kyungsoo.”_

_“I’m not angry at Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol said after a beat, although he knew that it wasn’t the truth. He looked down and shuffled his feet. “why— why would I be angry at him?”_

_“Why don’t you tell me?” Baekhyun shrugged, bringing the cigarette to his lips again._

_“I’m not angry at him,” Chanyeol muttered. He looked at his feet with a sore look blooming across his expression. After a moment of quiet, Chanyeol glanced up, unsettled by his own uncertainty. “I’m not angry at him.. am I?”_

_“Are you?”_

_Chanyeol pondered on the question for a long time. It all came back to him in a rush: the days spent chasing Kyungsoo with apologies spilling from his mouth, the days spent cancelling on plans with other friends to support Kyungsoo’s singing competitions, the days spent taking care of Kyungsoo at the expanse of his own work._

_Was he angry at Kyungsoo?_

_Had he been angry at Kyungsoo?_

_Missed opportunities to have a life of his own, missed opportunities to chase his own dreams and to do what made him happy._

_Had he_ always _been angry at Kyungsoo?_

_“I don’t know,” Chanyeol admitted weakly, “I don’t know.”_

_“Oh,” Baekhyun sighed half-heartedly, “I think you do.”_

_Chanyeol shook his head. “I don’t know.”_

_“Is that why you keep thinking back on that day where you shut the door in his face? Is that why the dismay on his face gives you so much satisfaction?”_

_Chanyeol froze. Baekhyun continued looking down, resigned._

_“This is how you live your life, Chanyeol.” Baekhyun said tiredly, “You think you’re free of whatever chains your friend put on you, but the only person who’s been doing it to you is yourself. You just can’t bear to be the villain in the real world.”_

_As much as he hated to admit it, Chanyeol knew that Baekhyun was right. He couldn’t forget the look of betrayal— so open on Kyungsoo’s devastated face— and he couldn’t suppress the urge to think about it. He couldn’t suppress the little smile that crept onto his face when he thought about how much it must have hurt Kyungsoo to see his friend leave him for once. He couldn’t suppress the desire to see it again._

_How good would it feel to see the way that Kyungsoo’s eyes would glisten in pure terror as his fingers wrapped feebly around Chanyeol’s stronger ones? How good would it feel to hear Kyungsoo choke on his last breath, knowing it would be the last? How good would it feel to see Kyungsoo afraid of him?_

_How good would it feel to see Kyungsoo afraid of_ him _for once?_

_How good would it feel to see Kyungsoo afraid of him? How good would it feel to see Kyungsoo afraid of him? How good would it feel to see Kyungsoo afraid of him? How good would it feel to see—_

“Since when has he ever been angry?!” Kyungsoo shouted back at Jongdae.

_Kyungsoo’s wide, wet eyes. Kyungsoo’s quiet gasp. Kyungsoo’s fingers digging into Chanyeol’s._

_I want to fucking hurt you. I want to fucking hurt you. I want to hurt you and I want you to watch me do it—_

“Since the beginning,” Chanyeol murmured. Kyungsoo and Jongdae looked back with furrowed brows, as if they had forgotten that Chanyeol was in the same room. Jongdae tilted his head to the side with a worried smile on his lips.

“I’m sorry?” Kyungsoo said, “What did you say?”

“I said since the fucking beginning, Kyungsoo!” Chanyeol belted out with rancour, kicking the chair next to him. The chair flew across the room before it hit the wall with a loud _thud,_ landing just a foot away from Kyungsoo. Jongdae and Kyungsoo flinched as the chair collided with the wall and looked up at Chanyeol in shock.

Chanyeol looked up with his body shaking in anger, with his molars grinding against each other.

Kyungsoo blinked, looking at Chanyeol in open shock. Jongdae looked back fearfully, turning his body around little by little, as if unsure if Chanyeol would throw something else at them.

“Chanyeol?” Kyungsoo said quietly.

“Just who the _fuck_ do you think you are?” Chanyeol sneered, “Do you honestly think that I have never been angry at you before? Do you honestly think that I'm the only douchebag in this room?”

“Chanyeol.” Jongdae said softly.

“No— I’ll do you one better. Do you honestly think that Baekhyun’s the only one who’s using me?”

“What—”

“And how about all those years where you’ve always asked me to help you with your homework? Or those years where you always guilt-tripped me into staying at home with you when I could’ve been out with other people?”

“Shut up.” Kyungsoo mumbled, looking away.

“You think that you’re the hero when you’re the goddamn villain. You think you’re somehow saving me from this _bad guy_ when you’re actually just upset that you no longer have a friend—”

“Chanyeol—”

“Shut up.” Kyungsoo said again, louder this time.

“But that’s it, isn’t it? You don’t have anyone else who’s willing to be with you, which is why you can’t let me go either—”

“Shut up!” Kyungsoo shrieked, “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

“Just look at yourself!” Chanyeol slammed his hand onto the table. The dishes skittered for a second before they settled down again. “Just look at yourself! Who the fuck do you think you are?! There’s no one in this room who would willingly hang out with you!”

“That’s enough!” Jongdae screamed, “Stop it, the both of you! Just stop!”

Chanyeol fell back on the balls of his feet, looking at Jongdae with his jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed into slits. He didn’t know if he was more surprised by the fact that the always easy-going Jongdae had finally lost his temper, or that Jongdae’s ire was directed at _him_ instead of Kyungsoo.

“That’s too much, Chanyeol! You’re too much!” Jongdae said curtly. Chanyeol blinked.

“Are you..” Chanyeol paused, still taken aback, “are you angry? At _me?_ ”

“How could I not be?”

Chanyeol took a second to stare incredulously at Jongdae. “You’re angry at _me?_ Why are you— I mean, what is this? You know that I’m right. You _know_ I’m right. You don’t even like him that much!” Jongdae only looked furiously back at Chanyeol with hurt brimming in his eyes, and somehow that hurt Chanyeol more than he expected it ever could. That the person who put that look on Jongdae’s face was _him._ It scratched a soft part of his heart that tore up easily and could not be mended. Chanyeol’s mouth twisted up into an enraged frown before he snapped, “Whose side are you on?!”

The air became stifling and cold in the long moment it took for Jongdae to look down at his feet and back at Chanyeol again, with a calm in his eyes that wasn’t there before.

“I like him a lot better than I like you now.” Jongdae replied quietly. Kyungsoo’s eyes widened in surprise at Jongdae’s admission. The peace loving Jongdae, the middle man Jongdae had taken a side.

And it wasn’t Chanyeol’s.

Chanyeol scoffed once, looking to the side. When Jongdae’s words finally sank in, he scoffed again more harshly. He worked his mouth for a long minute, considering all the different combinations of hurtful words he could use to spite his friends, but ended up shaking his head in disbelief.

When he looked up at them, standing frozen next to each other and away from him, he exhaled sharply. It couldn’t be considered a laugh, but what else could it have been?

“Suit yourself.” Chanyeol said under his breath. In the quiet of the room, his words were thunder. Chanyeol snatched his phone off the table and grabbed his denim jacket, and just as his hand grabbed onto the door knob, he looked over his shoulder at them with his face a mask of perfect blankness. “You know, you two deserve each other.” he said just as softly before he turned back and left, making sure to slam the door shut as he walked out.

The cold air was sharper than the words all of them had shouted in frustration. Walking on the streets for five minutes with nothing more than a denim jacket made Chanyeol regret not retreating into his room instead. It was too late to go back into his flat now. Going back would be an admission that he was wrong, that at the end of the day no matter what happened he would still need them.

His pride was too raw for that at the moment.

Instead, Chanyeol gritted his teeth and wrapped his arms around his body, darting behind the blocks to take refuge from the wind. In the partially lit narrow street, Chanyeol whipped out his phone and dialled Baekhyun’s number. He looked around the street worriedly as he sucked in a breath, hopping from foot to foot to keep warm.

Finally, the call connected.

“Where are you?” Chanyeol barked into the receiver without preamble. Sounds of shrill laughter and soft music playing in the background floated from over the line as Chanyeol waited for an answer.

Finally, Baekhyun spoke in a level voice. “And what business is it of yours where I am?”

“Are you free now?”

Baekhyun hummed distractedly, “What does it sound like?”

Chanyeol could hear faint murmuring from over the phone but none of it sounded like Baekhyun’s voice. And then suddenly, an unrecognisable voice chortled over the phone.

“It sounds like you are.”

“Maybe.”

“Can you pick me up?”

A woman wrapped in a thick coat crossed the road with her long hair messed up from the night breeze. She eyed Chanyeol suspiciously, giving him a dirty glare as she walked by briskly, hurrying her footsteps away. Chanyeol glared back at the back of her head as he waited for Baekhyun’s reply.

He could hear some shuffling in the background, clothes rustling slightly as if Baekhyun was getting into a more comfortable position. Chanyeol leaned his head closer to his phone, sandwiching it more tightly between his ear and his hand.

“Maybe not.” Baekhyun replied belatedly.

“Stop fucking around, Baekhyun.” Chanyeol snapped, “It’s cold out here and I’m wearing sweatpants. Are you gonna pick me up or not?”

“Don’t know.”

The call disconnected.

“Fuck!” Chanyeol snarled at his screen, as if Baekhyun would be able to hear him. “ _Fuck!_ ” Chanyeol said louder, drawing the word out. He kicked the brick wall a few times in quick succession before he rubbed a hand down his face roughly, taking several long breaths that filled his lungs like needles.

Fucking fantastic. He couldn’t go back to his flat and he had nowhere to go. Ironic how he told Kyungsoo that no one would willingly spend time with him. Look where he was now.

Alone in the middle of goddamn nowhere.

Chanyeol sighed exasperatedly, pinching the bridge of his nose as he thought of what to do now. Absentmindedly, he slipped his hand into his pocket, about to let go of his phone when he felt something else in there. Something cold to the touch, something smooth and metallic.

Chanyeol’s eyes flew open. He still had Baekhyun’s credit card.

_“Use it to get yourself a haircut or better clothes or something.”_

Chanyeol felt relief like a blanket being pulled over him in slow movements, spreading through his body with reassurances that he could go anywhere and do whatever he wanted. He had the money to and Baekhyun had told him to use it, didn’t he?

The corner of his lips curved up as he considered his situation under a new light. Truth was: it wasn’t that bad at all. He could buy new clothes, he could get a hotel room for the night. He could do lots of things that he couldn’t before, and now emboldened by the knowledge that he could not rely on who he thought were his friends, Chanyeol felt a new feeling of empowerment surge through his veins.

He could do lots of things that he couldn’t before. It was the most liberated that he had felt in his entire life. Free from expectations, free from commitments, free from pretending to be something he was not.

And in the midst of the euphoria, in the midst of the new plethora of options for what he could do, Chanyeol knew without question where he was headed to first. Afterall, he still needed to get dinner.

For a lack of better things to do, Chanyeol chose to walk to town. In the mid-winter, crowds were no longer a sight in the streets. Instead, people piled themselves into cars and rushed into the nearest building with a powerful heater. The roads were damp with a thin layer of snow shoved to the sides, all gray with dirt and trampled with different footprints printed on uneven hills. The lights reflected off the wet streets in a poor reflection of what it actually was, and Chanyeol appreciated the lazy night where he could walk through the once-bustling city area in sweatpants and a denim jacket without attracting too many unwanted stares.

Besides, he barely registered the cold anymore after the first ten minutes. What was some cold wind compared to being drenched in freezing water and crawling your way back on top of ice, anyway? In some ways, Baekhyun was right. When you’ve nearly died, nothing else really scared you anymore. Everything paled in comparison.

He was now living on borrowed time, and yet he lived while others were merely going through the motions of being alive. There was a newfound appreciation for all the little shitty things he once hated, a newfound freedom and power that came from knowing that he wasn’t supposed to be there anymore, but had defied the odds and survived.

He was now living on borrowed time and he would do it unapologetically.

By the time that he had reached the diner, Chanyeol was famished although he was in better spirits. His argument with Kyungsoo and Jongdae had faded out into insignificance and all he wanted was a nice meal with a hot drink to wrap his hands around.

As he stepped into the diner, he noted how empty it was compared to the eateries in the less expensive parts of town. There were no customers today and the waitress he’d grown so fond of was leaning against the counter with her eyes glued to her phone. Chanyeol strolled to the high chair in front of her and slid onto it smoothly, alerting her to his presence only because of the soft groan from the cushion. As she looked up, her eyes widened momentarily while her lips parted, and then collecting her thoughts, she screwed her face up with a steep frown that could rival Kyungsoo’s best.

“Your friend isn’t here.” the waitress said frostily, straightening her back as she slipped her phone into the pockets of her dress.

“Hey, you got a haircut.” Chanyeol pointed out, gesturing to his nape with a lazy smile. The waitress narrowed her eyes sharply.

“There’s no free meal for you to claim today.”

“It looks good on you, you know,” Chanyeol deflected, “It looks refreshing. It looked heavy the last time, kind of like a—”

“Hey!” the waitress interrupted, “Did you hear me? I said your friend isn’t here, and I’m not giving you any favours today.”

The smile on Chanyeol’s face fell at once. “Who asked you, actually?”

The waitress’ mouth snapped shut. She blinked in surprise and retreated a step back. The look of mild disquiet on her face ignited something wild in Chanyeol, something similar to what he experienced in his argument with Kyungsoo. Something vengeful, something seething. Chanyeol’s lips curled into a condescending smirk as he gave her a contemptuous once over, folding his arms on the table as he cocked his head to the side. “Do I look like I’m looking for him? Does it look like I’m begging you for scraps?”

The waitress worried her lower lip between her teeth for a brief second as her eyes darted wildly across the room. “You don’t have the money to pay for anything here. You told me that.”

Chanyeol reached into the pockets of his denim jacket and pushed the matte black card across the table. Light slid across the silver-rimmed edges of the card like a laser. The waitress stared at the card with her brows drawing close together. With hesitant hands, she picked it up and examined it.

“It’s not yours,” she concluded with a trace of doubt in her voice. Looking at the name again, she nodded with more certainty. Her eyes looked to Chanyeol with sudden ferocity. “This isn’t your card. You can’t use it.”

“Yes, I can.”

“I won’t accept it.”

“You will.”

“What’s your problem?” she snapped, waving the card in her hand. “This card doesn’t belong to you. I’ve seen this name too many times to know that you definitely aren’t Byun Baekhyun, and I’m not gonna put myself in trouble with the law by accepting payment from this card that doesn’t belong to you!”

“He gave it to me,” Chanyeol replied coolly, “It’s mine now.”

“Like that changes anything—”

“And, you know.” Chanyeol folded his arms on the table as he leaned forward with a look of mild irritation on his face. “I think I remember something about being rude to customers.” Chanyeol looked up feigning a thought. He tapped a finger to his chin and brightened up, smiling happily at the waitress. “Ah, no, it’s not _customers,_ silly me.” he dropped his smile at once. “It was _paying customers._ And I’m not, ah, _not exactly a paying customer_ anymore, am I?”

The anger in the waitress’ eyes was doused immediately as she took a small step back, bringing her hands to her chest with the card parallel to her body. She searched Chanyeol’s eyes silently, squaring her shoulders into a slight hunch as she retreated a step.

“And, you know something else?” Chanyeol chuckled to himself, “It’s a funny story, actually. Baekhyun told me. You know what he said?”

The waitress shook her head cautiously.

“Well, of course you don’t. Why would you?” Chanyeol snorted, “Since you don’t know, I’ll tell you. So _listen._ ” he looked back at the waitress with a piercing stare. “Are you listening?”

She nodded wordlessly.

“Baekhyun told me that there’s a store policy in here called three strikes.” The waitress jumped minutely, but Chanyeol caught it. It was the sweetest thing he’d seen today, how someone who had always looked down on him was suddenly realising that the tables had turned. It spurred him on to lean forward even farther and rest his head against his knuckles as a gentle smile curved his lips upward. “So you know it too, don’t you?”

The waitress looked down at her shoes, at the tiles, anywhere except Chanyeol.

“And, you know, what a shame it would be if you happened to upset me so much that I would be forced to leave a scathing feedback against you, wouldn’t it? What a shame, what a shame it would be to have one strike against you. One out of three, scary, isn’t it?”

He could see her lips quivering now, the arch of her neck getting steeper by the minute, and it was satisfying. Chanyeol revelled in the feeling of being in control. He was in the driver seat now, and he was stepping on the pedal.

“And, you know something? What a shame it would be if your manager happened to find out that two regulars stopped coming here, right? What a shame if your manager had to find out that his employee snatched a regular’s credit card away and told him to _fuck off._ ” Chanyeol clicked his tongue, “What a damn shame.” and with that, he hopped off the chair, about to leave when the waitress ran forward.

“No, wait!” she cried out desperately, hopelessly, “Please, don’t go! I’m— I’m sorry. I— I’m so sorry.”

Chanyeol spun around casually. “I’m sorry.” he cupped a hand around his ear. “What did you say?”

“I’m sorry,” the waitress repeated without second thought, “I’m sorry, I was rude. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please just don’t—” she stopped abruptly, taking a shaky breath before she begged, “Please don’t report me to my manager.”

Chanyeol let his gaze bounce around the room as he nodded his acknowledgement, a sign for her to carry on.

“I’m sorry,” the girl said with the sobering realisation of an alcoholic, “I’m _really_ sorry. I— I’ll— Is there anything that I can do for you?”

Chanyeol shrugged, letting time pass by, letting her fidget in his discomfort. “Sir.”

The waitress looked up with a crease between her brow. “I’m sorry?”

“You can start,” Chanyeol said pointedly, “by calling me _sir._ ”

The waitress looked to the side, turning the card around in her trembling hands. It took a long moment before she echoed softly, “What can I get for you, sir?”

Chanyeol continued staring at her, unimpressed. She glanced up before looking down again at the shiny smooth edges of the card in her hands.

“Complimentary, sir.” she added.

Chanyeol’s stare was unrelenting as he climbed back onto the seat, resting his chin on his palm. The waitress placed the card on the table and pushed it over with gentle fingers, letting it stop in front of Chanyeol. He slapped his hand onto the table, grabbing it loosely in his sturdy hands before he dropped it into his pocket.

“I’ve lost my appetite after our conversation.” a pause, “Something about being accused as a thief just pisses the fuck out of you, don’t you agree?”

The waitress' crestfallen expression deepened. “Yes,” she said quietly before remembering to add, “sir.”

“I even worked up a big appetite. I fully intended to buy one of the bigger meals you have on the menu, you know.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I was in the wrong.”

“Well, anyway, I’m glad that we were able to come to an understanding. Aren’t you glad?” She nodded stiffly. Chanyeol shrugged a shoulder. “That’s good. You can start to make up for your mistake by getting me a coffee.” Just as the waitress turned around, Chanyeol called out. “Ah, I almost forgot.”

The waitress looked over her shoulder warily. “Yes, sir?”

“Black. I want my coffee black.”

“Yes, sir.” the waitress said before vanishing into the kitchen. Chanyeol watched the kitchen door close behind her before he sighed and rubbed his temple with a hand. Now that the excitement had drained out of him, all that was left was fatigue. He was deeply fatigued. The heaviness sank to his bones and his body stiffened up, making his joints feel especially brittle.

Just when he was starting to relax, his phone began to vibrate in his jacket. Chanyeol fished out his phone and took one look at the caller ID. He laughed dryly for a moment before pressing it to his ear.

“Where are you?” Baekhyun asked.

 _Oh,_ now _you’re free to pick me up._ “The diner.”

“Ten minutes.”

The call disconnected just as the waitress returned with a steaming cup of coffee, timidly putting it between them on the table. Chanyeol picked up the teaspoon on the saucer and began to stir it. The brown island of tiny bubbles in the middle of the ocean of black began to disperse to the sides of the white cup, eventually disappearing as the little whirlpool in the middle of the drink washed them away.

Just as he brought the cup to his mouth, Chanyeol noticed the waitress still standing attentively in front of him. He raised a brow. “What?”

“Is there anything else that I can get for you, sir?”

“This is fine.” Chanyeol dismissed her with a small, tentative sip of his drink. Relief flooded the girl as she scrambled to move without appearing to hasty. Chanyeol blew on his drink to cool it fast enough to wolf down within ten minutes, taking big strides out of the diner and towards the back exit where Baekhyun’s car was only just pulling in. Chanyeol pulled the door open and threw himself inside, slamming the car door shut as he got in.

“Where were you?” Chanyeol asked accusingly, “I needed you an hour ago.”

Baekhyun started to drive out of the drop-off point. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”

“I needed you _an hour ago._ ”

“Then that’s too bad for you, isn’t it?”

“Where were you?”

“Somewhere.”

“It sounded like a party. Were you at a party?”

“Maybe.”

“Why’re you being so evasive?”

“Why’re you being so hostile?” Baekhyun shot back. His hand on the steering wheel was relaxed as he looked ahead with a passive expression, radiating calm next to Chanyeol who was bristling for a fight.

“I fought with Kyungsoo.”

“Physically?”

“What?” Chanyeol did a double take, furrowing his brows incredulously at Baekhyun. “I— no! Of course not. It wasn’t a physical fight.”

Baekhyun leaned his head towards the window. “Mmhm.”

Silence hung over their heads awkwardly. Despite the monotonous reply Baekhyun gave, there was an undertone in it that felt like an itch Chanyeol couldn’t ignore. A small little loose end to it that suggested something untoward about Chanyeol’s character.

Yet, it was the truth, wasn’t it? The thoughts he had during the argument, the twitch in his fingers he tried to ignore.

Chanyeol looked out of the window indignantly. He watched his own reflection stare back at him, but instead of having the same disgruntled look on his face, there was a split second where Chanyeol thought that he saw something else in there. For just the quickest moment, Chanyeol thought that he saw his own reflection smiling back at him knowingly.

He looked away from his reflection, deciding to fix his gaze at the street lamps lining the road. “I couldn’t hurt anyone, anyway.”

“I see.”

There it was again. That detached, short reply that hid something under its nonchalance. Something that suggested that Baekhyun was only accepting Chanyeol’s version of the story at face level, that suggested that Baekhyun didn’t actually believe what he was saying.

And it pissed Chanyeol off.

It pissed him off that Baekhyun had other ideas about who he was. It pissed him off that he would have to defend the truth to Baekhyun, that he had to justify his anger to Baekhyun of all people. Baekhyun, the only person he trusted would understand his frustration. Baekhyun, the only person who still seemed to be on his side.

“What?” Chanyeol asked in a clipped tone. Baekhyun took a glimpse at Chanyeol before shrugging a shoulder.

“What?” Baekhyun asked back.

“What’s with that reply? You don’t believe me?”

“Of course I don’t.” Baekhyun rolled his eyes.

“Why’s that? You think I’d hurt people? Do you really think I’m that kind of person?”

“Of course I do,” Baekhyun replied easily. He looked ahead with his hand lightly gripping the steering wheel, leaning his head towards the driver-side window as he maneuvered the car around the roundabout. “Have you ever seen yourself when you talk about your friend?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’ll give you a hint: you look like you want nothing less than to smash his face in.”

Chanyeol looked at Baekhyun, trying to decide if Baekhyun was joking or not. There was still no change in his self-assured expression, except for the little upward tug on the corner of his lips. His eyes looked forward in a dream-like haze that Chanyeol knew came not from any substance or drinks, but from satisfaction of hitting the nail on the head. It rubbed Chanyeol the wrong way, seeing how at peace Baekhyun was when Chanyeol was fuming inside. It made him feel as if Baekhyun was enjoying this, enjoying Chanyeol’s annoyance.

There it was again— that itch he couldn’t help but scratch.

“Is that so?” Chanyeol prickled.

“It is.”

“What makes you so sure, huh? You think you know me better than I know myself?”

“Of course I know you better than you know yourself.” Baekhyun looked left before guiding the wheel anti-clockwise. Chanyeol let his body sway as he glared at Baekhyun’s side profile. When the car straightened, Baekhyun rolled his head and said nothing else. Chanyeol waited for an explanation that Baekhyun owed, but Baekhyun wouldn’t say anything if Chanyeol wasn’t going to prompt him to.

“Well?” Chanyeol asked, “Why’s that?”

“Because you’re full of shit, Chanyeol, that’s why.” Baekhyun said, looking over to Chanyeol with a deadpan expression.

“Excuse me?”

“Everyone who lies to themselves, well, they know that that’s what it is: a lie. With you, you still think of it as the truth.” Baekhyun laughed humourlessly, “You actually want to paint these lies you tell yourself as the truth, and you’ll hide away the real truth that’s ugly. And then you wonder how people read you so easily.”

“Since you know me so well, what lies do you think I tell myself?”

“That you’re a good person.” Baekhyun’s amused smile disappeared. He looked ahead, point blank. “You’re not, Chanyeol. You’re really not.”

He wasn’t a good person?

Chanyeol fell silent. His defensive posture deflated into a defeated slouch as Baekhyun’s words started sinking in. He wasn’t a good person. He wasn’t a good person. He wasn’t a good person.

If he wasn’t a good person, did that necessarily make him a bad person?

What was it about him that wasn’t good? All his life, Chanyeol had always tried to be a good man. The law-abiding citizen, the courteous neighbour, the reliable friend. All his life, he let others have their way because he believed that it made him the good person. And now that he was finally standing up for himself, now that he was finally becoming his own person..

Did that make him the bad guy here?

Did it make him the bad guy if all he wanted was a little more respect from the people he had always given it to? Did it make him the bad guy if all he wanted was to do the things that made him happy? Did it make him the bad guy if he was finally starting to realise that he deserved better?

Was he a bad person now?

Did being a good person always mean having to submit to other peoples’ wishes? Did being a good person always mean having to forsake your own goals and desires for the sake of others’? Did being a good person always mean having to suppress your own opinions so that there’ll never be conflict with anyone?

Was he a bad person now?

“I’m not a good person?” Chanyeol repeated weakly. He tilted his head just a bit to look at Baekhyun with a sombre look. “What makes you so sure of that?”

Baekhyun remained quiet for a long time. His gaze ahead never deviated until they came to the next red light in the middle of an empty junction where only one man limped across. It was there that Baekhyun’s blank look turned into something thoughtful. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel with feather-light ease, letting the consecutive _thud, thud, thud_ cut the silence before he said, “It takes one to know one.”

The rest of the ride was silent. Chanyeol looked out of the window with his hands folded across his chest and body angled towards the side, while Baekhyun continued driving them to an untold destination. The roads looked emptier the longer they drove, and the night seemed heavier as time passed. It almost felt as if the sky had grown tired as well, impatiently waiting for the day to take over its shift again.

For a long time, Chanyeol looked out of the window without observing anything. He was occupied with thoughts of his argument with Kyungsoo and Jongdae, with his conversation with the waitress and the look on her face that he never thought he would put there.

Was he the bad guy here?

With his thoughts in a maelstrom, it wasn’t until the car was on an incline when Chanyeol started noticing the surroundings. Tall trees stood like fences and the headlights pointed them in a curved journey uphill. The roads were ill maintained with cracks lining the asphalt like stretch marks left from its prime days. Chanyeol pushed himself up in his seat, touching the glass gingerly.

“Where are we going?” He looked back to Baekhyun quickly. There was something undeniably familiar about this place, and Chanyeol was starting to fear that his suspicions were right. “Where are you driving us?”

“You mean you don’t recognise this place?” Baekhyun chuckled lowly, “We were only here a week ago.”

Chanyeol’s heart stuttered. “Stop the car.” Baekhyun drove on, and Chanyeol even thought he saw Baekhyun’s foot press harder on the pedal. “Baekhyun,” he hissed through clenched teeth, “stop the car.”

Baekhyun met Chanyeol’s stern gaze with his own easy one and smiled. The car continued on its trajectory upwards, and Chanyeol was starting to feel his heart protesting in his chest. “Stop fucking around, Baekhyun.”

“Do I look like I’m fucking around?”

“Stop the car. I’m not in the mood for some ice dunking again.”

“That’s good— me neither.”

“Stop the car, Baekhyun.” Chanyeol said loudly. When Baekhyun turned back and kept his eyes trained on the road ahead, Chanyeol’s voice grew frantic. “Stop the car.” he yelled, “Stop the car!”

He could hear his heartbeat thundering in his ears, he could feel his chest start burning and his throat start to close. He could feel his muscles start to tense up, ready to jump out of the car if he needed to. He could feel fear paralyse his thoughts, with everything coming back to a single line.

“Stop the car! Stop the car!” he banged his fists against the glove compartment in panic.

Baekhyun snorted as his chin dipped, smiling at the road.

“Stop the fucking car! Stop the fucking car!” his voice rose in a crescendo, climbing higher and higher than he thought possible. The vice around his throat wrapped itself in a tightening coil and the burn in his chest was spreading through his body like wildfire. There was a sharp, clear vision that came with his distress, and it focused only on the twisted smile that Baekhyun wore as he gripped onto the wheel with his knuckles gone white. Even then, perhaps it was a trick of the eye, but it seemed as if Baekhyun had stepped down on the pedal, as if the car had shot along on an unstoppable trajectory to hell.

“Stop the fucking car!” Chanyeol banged both hands against the glove compartment hysterically, chanting with his eyes darting around wildly. His ribcage constricted painfully, determined to squeeze his organs out from the gaps between them, and with every convulsion the metronome of his heart was still climbing to its unknown peak, until all he could hear was the thundering clap ringing in his ear. His hands were flailing wildly, landing on the window, on the seat, on the glove compartment, on an arm that was tensed up with a firm grip on the wheel. The car became suffocating, his breath was short, and all he could hear was _lub-dub, lub-dub_ which presaged something ominous.

“Stop the fucking car!” Chanyeol screamed, throat hoarse and voice raw with desperation, “Stop the fucking car! Stop the fucking car! _Stop this fucking—_ ”

The car swerved to a sudden stop, throwing the both of them hard against the side of their seatbelts. A puff of dirt swirled around the car like smoke, illuminated by the headlights like snow returning to the dark sky.

“What the fuck!” Chanyeol snapped, slapping the door. His hands were still trembling from the adrenaline rush and the fright that poisoned his thoughts. His mind was frazzled, still seized by the terror of knowing he was speeding to certain death just a second ago. His voice shook in a mix of fright and hatred as he yelled, “Are you fucking suicidal?! What the fuck is wrong with you? _What the fuck is wrong with you?!_ Are you trying to get us killed?!”

“If I really wanted to get us killed, don’t you think I’d have driven us off this cliff instead?” Baekhyun killed the engine smoothly and turned to Chanyeol, unimpressed.

“You sure acted like you were about to!” Chanyeol bit back. He slammed his fist against the door, biting down angrily on his lip as tears started gathering his eyes. “What the fuck is wrong with you?! Is this a fucking joke to you or something? Are you gambling with our goddamn lives?!”

“Why don’t you calm down,” Baekhyun said evenly, “You’re not dead, so why are you so angry about it?”

“And I wouldn’t be able to be angry about it if I was!”

“But you’re not, are you?”

“No, but—”

“Then what’s the issue here?”

It frustrated him. The blasé way that Baekhyun was talking about this, the uncaring look in his eyes, as if he hadn’t nearly plunged them off the cliff. Chanyeol grabbed Baekhyun’s shoulders and sank his fingernails into the fabric of his shirt as he shook him. Baekhyun’s head snapped back and forth and Chanyeol howled into his face with his cheeks going red from exertion. “You’re fucking psycho, that’s what!”

Baekhyun waited for a long moment to pass as he stared back at Chanyeol blankly, blinking a few times as if he had expected this reaction, as if he was _unimpressed_ by Chanyeol’s outburst of anger. Calmly, he removed Chanyeol’s hands from his shoulders, prying each of Chanyeol’s fingers off as if it were the hundredth time that he was doing this.

“And yet, you called me out tonight.” Baekhyun leaned back against the headrest, cold eyes challenging Chanyeol to contradict him. But there was nothing else to be said— it was true. Chanyeol _had_ called him out, even if this wasn’t exactly what he had in mind.

Then again, what had Chanyeol ever expected when it came to Baekhyun?

Chanyeol huffed, miffed. He scowled petulantly at Baekhyun. Dissatisfaction rolled off Chanyeol in waves, not that it bothered Baekhyun. Baekhyun continued looking at Chanyeol with the casual indifference he always wore so well, and finally after a long moment of silence had passed, all the tension and stress had dissipated from Chanyeol’s body.

With a quiet breath, Chanyeol asked guardedly. “Why’d you bring us here?”

“Because you were upset,” Baekhyun said earnestly. He looked away from Chanyeol in favour of admiring the view in front of them. For a moment, Chanyeol thought he saw a tinge of sadness flash across Baekhyun’s face, but after he blinked, it was gone. Baekhyun’s face was as plain as it had always been.

But that wasn’t the truth, was it?

There was a dreary quality to the silence between them that hadn’t been there before, and Chanyeol was certain that this was because there was a subtle change in Baekhyun’s feelings he hadn’t been quick enough to capture. Even as Baekhyun looked out of the windshield with honeycomb-coloured eyes that gave nothing away, Chanyeol knew intuitively that something about his mood was different.

“Why’d you bring us here, Baekhyun?” Chanyeol asked quietly.

It took a long time for Baekhyun to move again, and an even longer time for him to speak. When he did, his voice was barely audible. The silence might have eaten his words if Chanyeol wasn’t paying attention.

“This is my favourite place to be when I’m sad,” Baekhyun explained, almost forlorn. “I used to find some kind of twisted comfort in the city lights. They might look like stars in the sky would if they weren’t down there, don’t you think?”

Chanyeol turned his head reluctantly, taking in the sea of twinkling yellow and white lights buried in a universe of darkness.

“I used to think that these were the stars that god rejected, that they were banished from heaven.”

“How is that comforting?”

Baekhyun shrugged again. It was supposed to be the casual quick movement of his shoulders, but instead it felt heavy with wistfulness. Chanyeol was starting to wonder if all of Baekhyun’s casualness was actually indicative that he still cared too much, that he was just afraid of being too close to anything anymore.

Baekhyun smiled wryly at Chanyeol. “Because at least then there would be other things that god abandoned.”

Chanyeol’s gaze drifted from the city to Baekhyun and he let it linger on the completely serene expression on Baekhyun’s face. Acceptance. Baekhyun had made peace with where he was, and he had internalised his own truth that god had forgotten about him. That his family had left him and that was when god decided that he would, too.

Chanyeol tore his eyes away as his chest tightened painfully and his throat constricted. He watched the city lights twinkle underneath, and thought that if the sky above was filled with stars, and if the city lights under were a direct reflection of the starry night, that they must be in hell. That the only explanation was that they were in hell where everything that was once beautiful now rested, waiting to waste away and decay.

“Do you really think that god forgot about us?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe means that there’s still a chance that he didn’t. What do you think that means for us?”

“What do I think that means for us?” Baekhyun dug in his pockets, fishing out his slightly crumpled box of cigarettes. “I think it means that our conception of god is wrong.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Baekhyun pulled out a fresh stick and closed the box with a sharp _tick,_ “if god didn’t abandon us, that means that he’s watching all the suffering in the world happen without intervening. That means that can’t be omnibenevolent, can he?” Baekhyun brought the stick to his lips before pausing, “Or, you know, it could also mean that god isn’t omnipotent, either.”

Chanyeol watched in silence as Baekhyun slid the stick between his lips and took his lighter out from his jeans, lighting it with expert ease. He winded down both windows a third of the way and looked out of it for a thoughtful moment. Chanyeol could feel the cold air rush into the car, chasing away the warmth that had wrapped around them just a moment ago. Baekhyun took a drag and released it in a controlled line of gray, ushered out of the small gap by the lazy wind-drift outside.

“Take your pick: god’s either not good, or he isn’t almighty, or he isn’t here.”

“Does it have to be that way?” Chanyeol asked, “They all seem like equally bad options to choose from.”

“It is what it is.”

“God wouldn’t be god if he wasn’t all three.”

“Then maybe he isn’t.”

“If god isn’t god, then who is he?”

“Who knows?” Baekhyun sighed softly, looking back at Chanyeol. “Why do we even think that god has to be good, anyway? Why do we demand perfection from god?”

“Because that’s what god is— he’s perfect.”

“That’s a lot to ask of any being, isn’t it?” Baekhyun smiled crookedly, “Even god himself.”

“You said that you used to think that god abandoned you— what about now?”

“Now I think.” Baekhyun took a short drag and watched the smoke climb out of the gap. “Does it matter?”

“Huh?”

“If god didn’t, then he doesn’t care about me. If he did, then I don’t even have god anymore. In both cases, I don’t have god on my side. All I have is now, and that’s all that I need.”

They maintained eye contact for a long moment with just a thin trail of smoke weaving itself into their vision. Baekhyun looked back at Chanyeol with acceptance. His face was a blank slate that radiated tranquility that somehow seemed more powerful than any statement he could ever make. Acceptance that the present was all there was to life, and a quiet determination to grasp onto it relentlessly.

In the end, wasn’t life just a series of nows somehow strung together in a semblance of something greater than what it actually was? Wasn’t life made of all the nows that people go through, taking every now for granted until it was the last one that they’d ever have? Wasn’t life just the accumulation of nows that people would reflect on in their final days, and decide if the entirety of nows was worth the effort and time it took?

Baekhyun stretched his arm, offering the burning cigarette stick to Chanyeol. Chanyeol picked it with his fingers and held Baekhyun’s gaze as he inhaled deeply. There was always an earthy taste to the cigarettes that Baekhyun smoked, but he hadn’t tried enough cigarettes to have a preference on which he preferred. All he knew was that he enjoyed the feeling of the smoke filling his lungs. He imagined an empty balloon being inflated, and as he opened his mouth in a small ‘o’ to release the smoke, he could feel the earthy taste rebounding as the balloon deflated. Smoke came out of his mouth in a messy puff— he wasn’t as patient as Baekhyun was in drawing the moment out.

He passed the cigarette back to Baekhyun, who took another drag before returning it to Chanyeol. They spent the next few minutes passing the cigarette back and forth until it was nearly finished, which Baekhyun tossed out of his window carelessly before picking another stick out to light.

And as Chanyeol studied the way that the cigarette stick sat askew in Baekhyun’s mouth, as he observed the way that Baekhyun’s bony fingers pressed down on the lighter’s wheel, as he watched the way that the flame danced in its spot, how Baekhyun ducked his head to catch the flame with the cigarette between his pale lips, Chanyeol felt his chest fill with something else.

It could have been the remnants of the cigarette smoke he exhaled earlier, it could have been the new smoke he inhaled from the stick that Baekhyun just handed over to him, but Chanyeol knew it for what it was. It was feeling secure with Baekhyun, it was feeling special with Baekhyun.

“I love you,” Chanyeol said. He felt a weight lift itself off his shoulders with that declaration. His heart wasn’t racing like he read in books or heard about from friends, excitement didn’t electrify his body and cloud his thoughts. All there was was a calm that Chanyeol had not known he’d been searching for until it was found in those three words.

Baekhyun stayed silent for a long moment, only tearing his eyes away to blow out a breath of smoke from the window. Some of the smoke lingered in the air between them, creating a thin haze when Baekhyun quirked his eyebrows. “Hmm.”

“I love you,” Chanyeol said again with impatience in his voice, “I really do.”

“Well,” Baekhyun said, tapping his cigarette over the edge of the window before pulling his hand back. “We’re all entitled to our own delusions.”

“I’m not just saying this. I’m not— I’m not high, I’m not drunk. I’m not even tipsy.”

“Sure you aren’t.” Baekhyun took another puff as he settled back into the seat, leaning against the door as he looked at Chanyeol.

“I really love you, Baekhyun. I think I have since I’ve met you.” desperation was beginning to seep into his words. He didn’t know why he felt that he had to prove it, he didn’t know why Baekhyun was doubting him. He didn’t know what to do to make Baekhyun believe him, either.

Hadn’t it been obvious? He loved Baekhyun. He loved how alive he felt around Baekhyun, he loved how Baekhyun was able to make all his troubles seem so insignificant.

All he wanted was to spend time with Baekhyun. All he wanted was to be special to Baekhyun, and for Baekhyun to want the same things too. He wanted Baekhyun to want to be special to him. He wanted Baekhyun to find comfort in his presence. He wanted Baekhyun to love him as much as he loved Baekhyun.

And wasn’t he already?

Why else would Baekhyun give him his credit card and jacket, if it wasn’t love? Why else would Baekhyun spend so much time with him, if it wasn’t love? Why else would Baekhyun bring him to his special place, if it wasn’t love?

Didn’t Baekhyun already love him back? Wasn’t it love that kept them together until now, when any other person would have ran away?

Chanyeol swallowed thickly. “And I know that you love me too.”

Baekhyun brought the stick to his lips and took another drag before releasing it in an uneven line that flew across his face. “Is that so?”

“Yes, it is. You love me.” Chanyeol said, “I see it in your eyes. You love me.”

Baekhyun said nothing for a long time. This time, he didn’t offer the cigarette to Chanyeol. He smoked through it wordlessly until he was done and tossed it out of the window as he did before. As he rubbed his fingers together, he continued looking at Chanyeol, ruminating on what he should say for what seemed like an eternity to Chanyeol. Finally, Baekhyun grew bored of looking at Chanyeol and turned to the windshield.

“Like I said,” Baekhyun said, “we’re all entitled to our own delusions.”

Was this what love felt like?

Was it supposed to feel like you were treading the fine line between worship and destruction? Was it supposed to throw you from feeling special and unique to the other end where your ideas about what the world should be like, about what you should be like, were slowly, but surely, being dismantled?

Snow came down from the grey sky like little balls of cotton. Sunlight poked through the thick clouds in beams and the air was funereal and stale with moisture that would not dry.

Chanyeol extended a gloved hand and let a snowflake fall onto his palm and melt almost immediately into a few droplets of water. He looked up and stared at the colourless sky, wondering when the weather would stop being fickle minded about when it would shower snow. He closed his hand into a loose fist before he started walking to the drop-off point near his classroom, waiting for a familiar black car to pull in.

As he stood with both hands in the pockets of his black drape coat, Chanyeol blew out a breath that came out in a white puff. The unpredictable weather always worsened when he thought that the worst of the cold was over, and it always grew warmer when Chanyeol started to pile on thicker clothing.

He looked down at the footprints of people who waited in the same spot before him and studied the way the treads of their soles were partially covered with fresh snow. He smiled to himself as he rocked on the heels of his feet, wondering if someone would stand in his place minutes and hours later and look at his footprints as well.

“Hey.” a familiar voice called. It lacked the lackadaisical attitude that Baekhyun always had, and the jovialness that was characteristic of Jongdae. Chanyeol stopped rocking his body as his eyes wandered to the side, where the silhouette of a stout man stood just a short distance away.

Chanyeol stood up straight and rotated his body halfway, rolling his shoulders as he looked at his friend who seemed more like a stranger than he’d ever been. “Kyungsoo.”

Kyungsoo offered Chanyeol a half-smile and took a step forward, testing the waters. Chanyeol made no comment, which gave Kyungsoo the confidence to take yet another step forward, closing the gap.

“Hey, Chanyeol.” Kyungsoo looked down briefly before looking up again. His jaw worked for a long minute before he sighed and rubbed a hand across his mouth. “Hey, um, will you be home early tonight?”

Chanyeol shrugged. “Maybe.”

Kyungsoo’s face fell for a split second before he covered his disappointment with a quiet chuckle, bringing a closed hand to his pink lips as he laughed breathlessly. “Okay, well. Jongdae and I— we’re making dinner tonight. So if you’re free for dinner— I mean—” he cut himself off and shook his head, putting his hand into his pocket. “If you’re free for dinner tonight, how about having it with us at home?”

Chanyeol pulled a face as he pretended to consider the offer. “I’ll think about it.”

Kyungsoo’s smile grew into a hopeful grin that he tried to cover with the same hand he put down a moment ago. It was hard to ignore the sudden exuberance that oozed from his twinkling eyes, and suddenly Chanyeol started to regret giving Kyungsoo such an optimistic answer. He wondered if it had been wiser to give a more pessimistic reply in the event that he didn’t show up for dinner.

But then, who really cared?

Chanyeol lolled his head backwards as he took out his phone, about to check the time when he noticed Kyungsoo still standing in front of him with a worried frown on his face. Chanyeol watched as Kyungsoo shuffled his feet and looked at the mess of snow swept all over with his boots, and then he understood: there was something else that Kyungsoo came here for. The real reason he came to Chanyeol.

Chanyeol sighed as he rolled his shoulders again sluggishly. “Look,” he said, “what do you want from me, Kyungsoo? What did you come here for? Because I know you didn’t come here just to talk about dinner, of all things.”

Kyungsoo looked up diffidently before he averted his gaze. The joy in his eyes was subdued by whatever he had in mind. He inhaled deeply, as if the cold air would give him the confidence to speak the words he couldn’t.

It took a long time before Kyungsoo could break the silence that had grown suffocating with fear and expectation. “I’m sorry.”

Chanyeol froze.

Those were the words he’d dreamed of hearing for years. All this time, he kept imagining the day that Kyungsoo would finally apologise for something he was wrong about. He kept thinking of how Kyungsoo would say it, of where they would be and what they’d be doing when Kyungsoo finally said that he was sorry for anything.

Here it was. But why wasn’t Chanyeol happy to hear it?

“I know I was— I was unfair. And rude. And— I’m sorry.” Kyungsoo looked up for a second before he looked down at the wet tip of his boots, crushing the gravel under him. He took a second to collect his thoughts before he spoke again, “I was rude to you. I shouldn’t have— I mean, I’m sorry, Chanyeol. I’m sorry I lost my temper at you, I’m sorry that I hurt your feelings.”

Chanyeol tilted his head back until all he could see were grey clouds threatening to crash onto the ground, and then he swallowed.

This was what he always wanted to hear, so why wasn’t he happy? Was it because of how long and how much it took to finally get this apology? Was it because it only came when he no longer cared about it? Or was it because of how he managed to extract this apology? Cruel, heartless, inhuman.

The sky looked back blankly at Chanyeol, offering no words of sympathy or condolences.

“Okay,” Chanyeol said.

“Okay?” Kyungsoo looked up with an insecure smile.

“Yeah, sure.” Chanyeol offered him a half-smile. “Okay.”

Kyungsoo’s smile grew into the widest grin that Chanyeol had seen from his friend in a long time. There were so many emotions poured into that delighted laugh that Chanyeol found hard to pinpoint, not because it was difficult to identify, but because of what needed to happen for them to come to this new understanding of where they stood in each other’s lives. Chanyeol wasn’t the docile friend he’d been for years, and Kyungsoo wasn’t the authoritative friend he always was anymore.

Although it came as a relief to Chanyeol, in many ways, he felt a deep regret for the innocence that their friendship had lost.

“I’ll see you at home, then?” Kyungsoo said. His smile was etched to his lips. Chanyeol shrugged.

“Maybe.” Chanyeol looked over his shoulder and saw Baekhyun’s car parked at the side of the road. Chanyeol turned back and flashed Kyungsoo a half-hearted smile. “See you.”

Kyungsoo waved at him. “See you later.”

Chanyeol was the first to walk away, breaking into a light jog as he made his way to Baekhyun’s car. It was only after Chanyeol climbed into the warm car and shut the door that he saw Kyungsoo’s retreating back, growing smaller and smaller in the distance with a faint skip in his step.

Chanyeol smiled weakly to himself as he swung his bag to his lap and grabbed the seatbelt, only noticing Baekhyun’s reticence when the seatbelt clicked into place and not a single word had been uttered. The next thing that Chanyeol noticed was the scent of cigarette smoke in the air. He looked up slowly and found Baekhyun leaning against the car door with a cigarette dangling dangerously between his fingers. Smoke left the car in tendrils slipping between the gap of the driver-side window.

“Baekhyun?”

Baekhyun ignored him in lieu of looking ahead, keeping his eyes trained on their campus and the students that breezed through the wide corridors, huddled together for warmth.

“Baekhyun?” Chanyeol tried again. Still, Baekhyun paid him no mind. Baekhyun tilted his chin up as he took a long drag, huffing it out slowly without taking his eyes off the same spot he had been looking intently at. Chanyeol looked between Baekhyun and the campus quizzically, leaning forward to sneak into Baekhyun’s peripheral. “Baekhyun? What’re you looking at?”

Baekhyun tapped his cigarette out of the window and ashes fell away like snow.

“Are we going to go?” Chanyeol said. Frustration crept into his tone. “Baekhyun? Hello? What’s wrong?”

Baekhyun closed his eyes as he inhaled again, pulling the cigarette away as he let his breath out slowly.

“Baekhyun?” Chanyeol snapped, “Baekhyun!”

Baekhyun sighed softly and, with his eyes still closed, brought the stick to his lips again.

“Baekhyun!” Chanyeol shouted.

Another inhale.

“ _Baekhyun!_ ”

Baekhyun’s eyelids fluttered open slowly. He exhaled languidly as his gaze drifted to Chanyeol. His expression was as listless as the clouds were, but there was a spark in his eyes that was only just beginning to burn. And from experience, Chanyeol knew that it wouldn’t take long for it to explode into something dangerous.

Chanyeol fell back silently into his seat, setting his jaw. He waited as Baekhyun took his time to smoke while he scrutinised Chanyeol, giving him a scathing look even as his body was slouched.

Finally, as Baekhyun released his last breath of smoke, he spoke quietly. “Do you know what I hate about you, Chanyeol?”

Chanyeol blinked as his mouth fell open in surprise. Even though he knew that he couldn’t expect anything from Baekhyun, he was still taken aback by the randomness of Baekhyun’s words.

“What?”

Baekhyun flicked his cigarette out of the window. “You’re so fucking insincere.”

Now, Chanyeol was really confused. He had no idea what he had done to deserve this unprecedented assault on his character. He had no idea what Baekhyun was talking about, and yet it seemed that Baekhyun was intentionally trying to provoke him into a fight.

“What?” Chanyeol asked again.

“You act like you care about people you don’t and you pretend to be friends with people you hate.”

“I’m not pretending.” Chanyeol said defensively. He was starting to get upset by Baekhyun’s baseless accusations. He was getting really upset by Baekhyun’s aggressiveness.

Baekhyun snorted and shook his head derisively. “That’s just what you think.”

“Why would I pretend to be friends with Kyungsoo?”

“You tell me.”

“Well—” Chanyeol sighed, agitated. He took off his beanie and ran his hand through his flattened hair, looking out of the window for a moment as he collected himself. “I’m not, okay? I’m not pretending.”

“Okay,” Baekhyun said. He reached into his pocket and took out a new cigarette stick, turning away from Chanyeol as he lit the fresh stick between his lips and took a long drag. Smoke wafted through the air as Baekhyun pulled it away, hanging his hand out of the window as he held Chanyeol’s cold look. “Then ditch him.”

“What?”

“Ditch him.” Baekhyun enunciated each word slowly.

“Why would I do that?” Chanyeol waved his hands around wildly. “Didn’t you hear me? I said he’s my friend.”

“Do you like him?”

Chanyeol found himself unable to answer. Months ago, he would have said yes in a heartbeat. Now, the same words that would have rolled off his tongue easily glued his lips together. Did he like Kyungsoo? Sure, he liked Kyungsoo as much as a stranger liked another stranger who didn't intrude into his personal space. Sure, he liked Kyungsoo as an acquaintance who accompanied him through his teenage years. But did he still like Kyungsoo as he did before? Chanyeol couldn’t answer that— or rather, he didn’t want to. Instead, he said, “He’s my friend.”

“But that’s not the question I asked, is it?”

Chanyeol locked his jaw. “I like him fine. He’s my friend.”

“But, see,” Baekhyun blew smoke out of the window and watched it dissipate before he finished his thought. “that’s the thing that I don’t understand. Do you like him because he’s your friend, or is he your friend because you like him?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it does.” Baekhyun scoffed, tapping the stick outside the window. “Don’t you ever use your brain before you speak?”

“He’s my friend because I like him, okay?” Chanyeol raised his voice. He gripped onto the edges of the seat, digging his fingers into the tough cushion. “Is that what you want to hear? Is that what you want me to say?”

“And why do you like him?”

“What?”

“Why,” Baekhyun punctuated the word, “do you like him? Does he make you happy? Does he add sunshine and daisies into your life? Does he add value to your life? What is it about him that you like?”

“ _I like him because he’s Kyungsoo!_ ” Chanyeol bellowed, “I like Kyungsoo because he’s Kyungsoo! Kyungsoo’s my friend because I like him!”

Baekhyun laughed dryly. “What the fuck does that even mean?”

“It means what it means! I like Kyungsoo because he’s Kyungsoo!” Chanyeol seethed, “What about it? Why do I need to benefit from his existence to like him?”

“I’m just trying to understand why the _fuck,_ ” Baekhyun suddenly slammed his hand on the steering wheel, “you keep hanging around someone you obviously don’t seem to like very much.”

Chanyeol jumped at Baekhyun’s sudden outburst of anger. He’d never seen Baekhyun so angry before, he’d never seen Baekhyun lash out before. It struck him then that this was the first time that he was seeing Baekhyun lose his temper. In all the months that they had spent together, Baekhyun had never once lifted his hand to strike anything. Not when Chanyeol was yelling at him, not even when Chanyeol was threatening to punch him.

And then it struck him that this was a side of Baekhyun that he had never seen before, and it scared him how Baekhyun’s rage consumed him. His fierce gaze pierced through Chanyeol and the down tug on his lips twitched as his eyebrows were drawn together.

It was the first time that Chanyeol felt all his senses screaming at him to get out of the car. It was the first time that he sensed a direct threat from Baekhyun in overwhelming waves, stifling the air.

“I..” Chanyeol stammered, backing away, “I’m not—”

“You like Kyungsoo because he’s Kyungsoo? Stop fucking around with me, Chanyeol.” Baekhyun sneered, “I could ask you why you don’t like that busker in the train station, the beggar that sleeps around campus, and you’ll tell me that it’s because they’re not Kyungsoo? You can’t even explain your own partiality towards him.”

“And what’s it to you?” Chanyeol shot back angrily, “Does everyone need to add some kind of value to your life in order for you to keep them around?”

Baekhyun glanced at the half-burnt cigarette between his fingers and flicked its body sharply. A short cylinder of ashes fell apart in bits and pieces. “I thought we were done asking stupid questions.”

“And what about—” Chanyeol hesitated. He didn’t know if he wanted to know the answer, but he had to. He just needed to. “and what about me?” he asked, distressed. His mouth pulled itself into a tight line before he could speak again. “What kind of value do I add to your life?”

Baekhyun looked at Chanyeol for a second that stretched into eternity. With his cigarette between his lips and his eyes guarded with layers of impenetrable steel, it was hard to fathom what could be going through Baekhyun’s mind as he watched Chanyeol’s expression crumble in front of him.

Baekhyun sighed quietly. A cloud of gray erupted in his face. “Entertainment.”

Entertainment. He was _entertainment_ for Baekhyun.

Now, where had he heard this before?

_“Do you really think that he even cares about you? Are you crazy? He’s just using you for his fun!”_

Had he not been warned by Kyungsoo?

 _“All you are is a new toy for him to play with and when he’s done— not_ if _, but_ when _he’s done— he’s gonna toss you out! Just like he always does!”_

Had he not brushed it off? Dismissed the truth in Kyungsoo’s advice as pettiness and jealousy?

And what did he say to Kyungsoo back then, all those weeks ago? Ah, wasn’t it something like—

_“You think that you’re the hero when you’re the goddamn villain.”_

Oh, how the tables had turned. Oh, how wrong he was to dismiss Kyungsoo like that. Kyungsoo had always been the wiser one, always steering him out of trouble.

And look where he was now. Alone, betrayed, and disappointed. All by himself. And who else was there to blame but himself?

Chanyeol swallowed thickly, looking down at the back of his palms. “So that’s what I am, huh?” he chuckled self-deprecatingly, “Entertainment to you? Is that it? Is that all of it?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Baekhyun rolled his eyes, taking the last drag his cigarette would allow before tossing it out. “What else did you think you were to me?”

Chanyeol’s eyes flashed as he looked up with a hard glare. “You’re a real piece of shit, you know that?” he spat, “You’re such an asshole.”

Smoke billowed from Baekhyun’s mouth. “And what about you?”

“What?” Chanyeol furrowed his brows.

“You think you’re so altruistic? You think you don’t keep people around because they bring you something you want?”

“I don’t..” Chanyeol’s voice trailed off momentarily, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Look in the mirror, Chanyeol.” Baekhyun said with his lips curled cruelly. He pushed himself upright with his hand and looked back at Chanyeol with scorn and ire raging in his dark mahogany eyes. “You like to point fingers and criticise people, but you know, at least I’m not the person hiding behind different masks, masquerading as different people when it’s convenient for me.”

Chanyeol fell back with his lips closing softly. He stared at Baekhyun with thinly concealed hurt in the slope of his eyes. Baekhyun took a look at him and scoffed, looking away as if he couldn’t stand the sight of Chanyeol.

“Do you know how fucking ugly you look, when you look at me like that?” Baekhyun muttered under his breath, “It’s fucking pathetic.”

That was the first time that there was a lag in the film.

Chanyeol stood up from his seat in the theatre, puzzled. He looked at the frozen image on the big screen, a picture of Baekhyun’s wide-eyed laugh immortalised in that single frame, and then he looked back at the projector room where no one was.

It was strange. It was the first time that there had ever been a hiccup in the film reel, edited subtly so many times over that it had almost become a completely new film altogether. And yet, throughout all the many times it had been taken apart and pieced back together, there had never been such a problem as the film stopping mid-way.

Just as Chanyeol was about to leave the theatre in search of staff he knew were not there, the reel started to move again. Chanyeol sighed in relief as he made his way back to his usual seat, right in the centre of the empty theatre, and picked up his box of popcorn again.

The reel continued spinning, and the images continued flashing on the wide screen. Unknown to Chanyeol, the doors were starting to lock from the outside. He sat in blessed ignorance, laughing at the inside jokes only he understood, smiling at stolen moments only he was there to experience.

If days had melted into a singular, incomprehensible stream of time before, the reverse was happening now. The frigid wind ushered itself out with what little snow there was as the sun began beating down on them. It seemed that the war that was all but lost for day had found itself in a rejuvenated battle for territory.

Footsteps echoed in the long corridor of his university, his long shadow elongated with every thundering step he took through the empty space. With one hand on the strap of his sling bag, he walked forward with fluidity that belonged on a runway.

Things were changing around here.

During the day, Chanyeol was the average, unremarkable student that he always was. Always late to classes with his pencil case of multicoloured pens and highlighters that hadn’t been touched in weeks, always alone in the corner seat of every room. He was the student in the last row of the lecture hall with his chin grazing the back of his fingertips and his eyes on the looking out of the window, he was the student who was silent when it came to class discussions, the student that looked calmly preoccupied with other matters.

Except that his fingers were picking at his fingernails under the table, and his teeth were clenched tighter than they looked.

Just before he reached the door leading out of the building, there was a burst of movement from behind him. A flurry of footsteps roared behind as a flood of students came rushing out of a lecture theatre, with their humdrum existence pouring into space like trash onto mulberry silk and vicuna wool. With their incessant chatter that blended into a shrill ring, with their blessed ignorance about other people’s lives.

Except that Kyungsoo was no longer his constant companion in any lesson. In fact, Kyungsoo never frowned at him anymore. Kyungsoo never talked down to him anymore, never told him what to do anymore. All Kyungsoo was was eager to please, smiling at Chanyeol whenever they met.

And during the night, Chanyeol was starting to realise that there was another part of himself, separate from the one he discovered with Baekhyun. He was walking through empty train stations with his hands in the pockets of his denim jeans alone, illuminated by harsh white light, with only the sound of his footsteps reverberating off the cracked tiles on the walls to keep him company. He was watching the busker outside the train station strum his guitar with his arms folded and his lip between his teeth.

Except that when he checked his phone, there were no notifications or missed calls from Baekhyun. All there was were his messages left on read and not a word of acknowledgement.

He was pacing in the little space of his room, going back and forth with his fingernail between his teeth. He was closing the diner menu and ordering the food he’d always wanted to eat without a single glance at its price, meeting the waitress’ look of resignation and unease and without someone to embolden him.

Someone ahead held the door open for Chanyeol and he breezed through it without his gait ever faltering. As the sunlight outside rained down on him mercilessly, he lifted a single hand over his squinted eyes and scanned the groups of students walking all over the place. In pairs, in threes, in groups and all alone.

And there he was, standing outside the door with students still streaming behind him. They went around him as Moses once parted the Red Sea. He looked from one side and slowly gazed over the other, where the dropoff point was, and he began to walk again.

He was sitting on the last bus home with his hands stacked on his lap, leaning his head against the cool glass with raindrops racing each other down. He was looking back at his own reflection, staring at the bothered slant of his lips, the dour expression in his eyes.

Was it still counted in days? Or would it be easier to count things by the hour now?

Now, it was daytime that was launching a counterattack against the night. Every second, every minute, every hour was a new victory. It washed the sky of its toxins and breathed new life into the city as people started coming out in droves, filling the empty spaces with chatter once again.

As he walked towards the little curved road where a sleek black car sat in waiting, Chanyeol watched as another person pulled open the passenger-side door and got in. A girl with cropped hair, a girl with dark red matte on her thin lips and the sweetest smile Chanyeol had seen.

Things were changing around here.

He slammed the empty glass down on the bar and rattled the square block of ice inside, nodding to the bartender who refilled it with an ambre-coloured liquid. He was agitated when he stubbed out the third cigarette of the night into the ashtray and dumped its crumpled body next to the corpses of its friends.

But when he put the newly filled glass to his mouth, the new cigarette between his lips, all his hesitance, all his doubts—

They all vanished into a single breath of air.

Sunlight was streaming in from the cracks in the sky. Leaves were starting to grow again.

Chanyeol watched from a distance as a girl got into the car without a hitch and wrapped her arms around her laptop bag before reaching out to grab the door handle. As she did, she looked up and met Chanyeol’s inscrutable face. Her smile dimmed slightly as she turned around, muttering something to Baekhyun that Chanyeol could not hear, but understood anyway.

How incredible was it that the distance of many worlds could be encompassed in just a few metres? How incredible was it that as his eyes wandered over to meet Baekhyun’s stare, the more he realised that he was losing the man in front of him? How incredible was it to feel all the unspoken questions clog up his throat, and to know that he would never get any answers to them?

But she wasn’t there when Baekhyun and Chanyeol stood under the graces of a million stars on a clear winter night. She wasn’t there when Baekhyun gave Chanyeol his denim jacket and told him that it suited him better. She wasn’t there when Chanyeol told Baekhyun that he loved him atop the twinkling city lights.

Just who the fuck did she think she was, anyway?

Baekhyun turned his head ever so slightly to the girl, holding Chanyeol’s stare as his lips widened into a spiteful grin.

Things were not changing around here. They already had.

Baekhyun’s lips moved and the girl closed the door shortly after nodding her head. As the car drove by him and as the warm air piled out from behind the car, Chanyeol stared at the diminishing view of the black car disappearing behind a building.

His fingers tightened around the strap of his bag.

Or was this what love felt like?

Always bouncing from wanting to shower affection to wanting to ruin the same thing you loved so dearly? Was love about cherishing the sweet and tender moments of vulnerability, wrapping your warm, loving hands around someone’s fragile heart, digging your thumb into the softest parts of their hearts and watching it paint your hands in red?

The faint scent of smoke wafted in from the gaps of the locked theatre. Something was burning outside. It should have been worrying, it should have been a sign to evacuate.

But who could leave when the best part of the film was only just beginning?

Why was it that he kept coming back to this day?

Spoon in one hand and a pair of chopsticks in the other, the wind brushing his hair into his eyes and the scent of smoke drifting through the wind. The same greenery peppered with orange, the same herd of students walking about their businesses, the same goddamn birds flying overhead, mocking him for being trapped in this purgatory.

What was it about this day that he kept coming back to?

Chanyeol lifted up his head reluctantly. Baekhyun pocketed his lighter as he looked ahead at the campus greenery, huffing out another breath of smoke as he pulled the cigarette away.

“It’s you, again.” Chanyeol said lifelessly.

“It is.” Baekhyun sighed.

Chanyeol put the utensils down and pushed away the small pot of stew blowing steam into his face. Baekhyun lolled his head, closing his eyes as a cloud wandered over, blocking the strong sunlight pouring down on them.

“Don’t you have some questions you’d like to ask?”

Chanyeol barely opened his mouth before he closed it again, looking down at the bubbling pot of soup. Baekhyun might have been right if he had asked the question a few days ago, maybe a few weeks ago. But in the short time that Chanyeol and Baekhyun sat across each other on this routine day, Chanyeol had unknowingly stumbled upon the missing piece of the puzzle he never realised he had all along.

What was it about this day that he couldn’t let go of?

The reason why he saw Baekhyun everywhere— in his conversations with the real Baekhyun, in his arguments with Kyungsoo, in the quiet moments he spent thinking by himself— was the same reason that the real Baekhyun fought with him about. The reason why he could never stand up for himself, the reason why he was always letting happiness slip through his fingers like fine grains of sand.

All these questions intersected in a single answer that was sitting in front of him now. It had never been as clear as it was in that moment.

“I did,” Chanyeol said, “But I know the answer now.”

Baekhyun stiffened up just enough for it to be noticeable, but not enough to comment on. He raised a critical brow as he leaned forward to grab the cup of coffee in one hand. As he retreated back into his original position, he glanced sceptically into the cup.

“It seems that you do.” Baekhyun agreed. Chanyeol nodded.

“The question I never asked.. you couldn’t tell me either, could you?”

“That’s right.”

“Because I didn’t know what I wanted to hear.”

“That’s right.”

“Because I needed to know what I want, for you to be able to tell me what I want.”

There was a moment of surprised silence on Baekhyun’s end. He hesitated, fingers freezing up for a split second before they relaxed around the rim of the cup. He took a cautious sip of his hot drink before placing it back on the table again.

“It seems that you do know, afterall.” Baekhyun said with a hint of approval lacing his voice.

“You were right.” Chanyeol looked around him briefly. “You were right that the answers were all here, because this is all happening in my head. This is all a part of me—” Chanyeol turned back to Baekhyun, who was already staring fixedly at him with an indecipherably blank expression. “Just like you are.”

A long moment passed before the corner of Baekhyun’s lips curled upwards. He leaned back in his chair and swung his hand close to his face, craning his neck to take a drag. As he released it, gray lines zigzagged across the distance of the table to Chanyeol’s face. Chanyeol sat still even as secondhand smoke brushed his face and tickled his nose.

“More specifically,” Chanyeol added, “you’re the part of me that I’ve always wanted to be.”

Baekhyun said nothing as he tapped the butt into the ashtray. White flakes flittered down into the plastic tray.

“It only took you a few months but I’m glad that you managed to find it out yourself.”

And now with Baekhyun’s confirmation, Chanyeol couldn’t help but to notice the way that Baekhyun’s moods always seemed to match his. He couldn’t help but to notice the way that Baekhyun dug up the ugliest side of him and threw it in his face.

Baekhyun had been the part of him he always wanted to erase, and it took meeting the real Baekhyun for Chanyeol to realise that he was never the person he tried to be his entire life.

But that wasn’t all there was to it, was it?

No, there was something else. There was something that Baekhyun was waiting for Chanyeol to bring up.

Chanyeol looked away. “There’s still something I don’t understand.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Why Baekhyun?” Chanyeol asked, “Of all the shapes you could’ve taken— why Baekhyun?”

Baekhyun barked a harsh laugh, tilting his head back as his eyes fluttered shut with glee. “Isn’t it obvious?” Baekhyun said between giggles. It took a moment for him to sober up and sit back in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankles as he smiled at Chanyeol. “Well, I guess there’s no helping it. There’s some things that you still can’t see because you haven’t reflected deeply enough yet.”

“I don’t get it.” Chanyeol frowned, “Is it because I love him?”

“Love him?” Baekhyun parroted, “Chanyeol, you don’t love him.”

“You’re wrong.” Chanyeol said immediately, standing up. His chair screeched angrily as it skidded backwards. “I do. I love Baekhyun.”

“Yeah, well, that’s just what you think.” Baekhyun laughed, then he pulled a face and said, “Oh, you think you’re in love. Oh, you think that you _love_ him. He was right, you know? We’re all entitled to our own delusions and you certainly have yours.”

The door creaked, students laughed. The wind blew gently against Chanyeol’s face, ruffling his hair.

“My delusions?”

“That’s right, your delusions.” Baekhyun picked up his cup and took another sip. He watched Chanyeol’s perplexed expression deepen as lines bracketed his mouth and his eyebrows began to knit together. Baekhyun shook his head with an amused smile. “You still don’t see them?”

“What?”

“You don’t love Baekhyun,” Baekhyun said gently. The kindness in his voice surprised Chanyeol. For someone who was always ready to taunt him, the sudden tenderness in the moment made him realise that Baekhyun was being honest with him now. That Baekhyun was aware that this moment would be a watershed one.

And it was true, because how could Chanyeol not love Baekhyun?

“I..” Chanyeol scratched his neck, eyes darting everywhere. “I love—”

“You don’t,” Baekhyun interrupted softly, “You think you do, but you don’t.” Baekhyun put down the cup and flicked his cigarette over the ashtray again before returning to his position. His eyes seemed sad even as he offered a half-smile to Chanyeol. “What you love is what Baekhyun represents. You love the freedom he gives you, the lifestyle he has. What you love is the idea of Baekhyun, Chanyeol. But you don’t love him. I don’t think anyone can.”

“I..” Chanyeol stuttered, feeling himself wilt. “How could I not? I’m terrified of losing him.”

“Yeah, of course you are. Who else would you blame if you lost him?”

“I—” Chanyeol paused, “What?”

“What?”

“What did you say?”

“Who else would you blame, if you lost Baekhyun too?” Baekhyun took a moment to observe the butt of his cigarette. “You already lost Kyungsoo and Jongdae. You even lost the waitress, too.”

“Kyungsoo and I are still friends. Jongdae’s still my friend.”

“Are they?”

“Of course they are!” Chanyeol fumed. Baekhyun’s eyes shot up to scrutinise Chanyeol before he brought the cigarette to his lips again, inhaling lightly as he looked deeply into Chanyeol’s anxious eyes.

“Is that why Kyungsoo is so eager to please you?” Baekhyun asked at last, “Is that why Jongdae avoids you now? Or why the waitress is afraid of you?”

“That’s a lie.”

“They’re not your friends. Or rather, they were before you turned into a massive douchebag.” Baekhyun looked down at his half-empty cup and picked it up. “You don’t even like them.” Baekhyun added as an afterthought.

“If I don’t like them, then why would I still hang out with them?”

“Cause you like the control you have over them.” Baekhyun took a sip of his drink and smacked his lips when he was done. “We’ve been through this. You’re not the good guy— you’re not even a good guy. You’re the bad guy, Chanyeol. You’re the villain in this story. You manipulate people into doing things for you, you guilt trip people into apologising for things that aren’t their fault. You want to hurt Baekhyun. You like him most when he’s hurt and vulnerable. And you do all of this while pretending to be the manipulated victim. What do you think that says about you?”

Chanyeol opened his mouth to throw a scathing remark back at Baekhyun when he froze in thought.

Wasn’t it all true?

It was only when Baekhyun was bloodied and bruised, laid out in his bathtub with Chanyeol towering over him, that Chanyeol first felt something akin to fondness for Baekhyun. It was only when Chanyeol imagined wrapping his hands around Kyungsoo’s neck and wringing it that he felt most satisfied. It was only when the waitress was shocked into silence that Chanyeol felt most comfortable.

“I’m not the good guy?” Chanyeol said, crestfallen. Baekhyun nodded.

“You’re the bad guy.”

“I’m the bad guy?” Chanyeol repeated weakly. Baekhyun nodded again.

“It’s not all that bad, you know. Think about it, when you were pretending to be good, you had no one who stood up for you. Now that you’re realising how disgusting you truly are, you still have no one on your side.” Baekhyun sighed, “Either way, no one’s on your side.”

Why did it hurt so much to hear it from Baekhyun?

Did it hurt more that he was finally confronted with the truth, or did it hurt more that he’d already known from the start?

He didn’t have anyone who stood up for him. He tried so hard to make everyone love him by suppressing everything about himself, and they walked all over him. He tried so hard to be loved that he ended up becoming a stranger he didn’t even recognise.

He didn’t have anyone then, and he certainly doesn’t have anyone now.

“I don’t even have god,” Chanyeol mumbled.

“You don’t even have god,” Baekhyun agreed, “All you have is now. So what’re you gonna do about it?”

What was he going to do about it? That was why he kept coming back to this day, wasn’t it? The day that his life split into two parts when he decided to reach out to Baekhyun. This was the day that changed everything for him. He could’ve kept his distance and remained Kyungsoo’s beloved best friend. He could’ve remained the polite, nice young man that everyone took to quickly.

He doesn’t have anyone on his side now. And what was he going to do about it?

He was the bad guy now. He was going to do whatever the fuck he had always wanted to do.

Chanyeol remembered all the times that he imagined a different reality from the one he lived. He’d wanted to hurt Kyungsoo. He wanted to hurt Baekhyun back at the frozen lake, too. He’d been _itching_ to pummel Baekhyun’s delicate face until it resembled the broken man he loved so dearly in the bathtub all those nights ago.

Oh, how he wanted to see that man again. The man with lines of red inching down pasty skin that were torn apart, the man with red and purpling bruises blooming across his cheekbones like flowers in spring. Oh, how he longed to cup his swelling chin and to tell him how much he loved him.

_I love you when you’re mine. I love you when you want to run but can’t. I love you when you’re hurt and all you have is me. I am your protector, I am your saviour, and I am yours just like you are mine._

Chanyeol’s eyes wandered to Baekhyun, watching him with a smug smile.

_And I will keep you, because you belong to me, just as I belong to you._

“Do you get it now?” Baekhyun asked, stubbing out his cigarette with a boot. He leaned forward with his elbows on the table, lacing his fingers together. Chanyeol stared back at him blankly for a long moment before his mouth began to curve into a lopsided smile. Baekhyun returned Chanyeol’s smile with a grin, resting his chin on the bridge of his fingers. “Do you understand what you have to do now?”

Things had never been as clear as they were in that moment, and it was the first time Chanyeol could recall that everything finally made sense. For the first time in a long time, Chanyeol felt his heart soar with hope, something that he had lost along the way but found again. And now that he had found it again, Chanyeol knew that it would never slip from his grasp ever again. With Baekhyun looking at him expectantly, Chanyeol said nothing, but his smile broadened.

“You’re going to lose him, you know.”

Chanyeol’s smile grew into a smirk.

“Who else will understand your vices, Chanyeol? Who else will encourage you and even fund your self-destructive habits? Who else will stay with the barbaric monster you’ve become?”

Chanyeol’s smirk grew into an uneven grin.

“You’re going to lose him if you don’t do something.” Baekhyun paused dramatically, sharing a knowing smile with Chanyeol. “Do you understand what you have to do now?”

The cloud floated away and the sun rained down on them again.

The room was engulfed in smoke, but the film reel was still rolling, pictures were still moving on the big screen. Unseen footage that Chanyeol hadn’t seen before. He sat in his seat with his eyes glued to the screen, fingers gripping the armrests on his sides with fervour. He was absolutely enchanted, hypnotised. The smoke was only a minor hindrance to him, something that he could ignore easily.

Afterall, how could he leave when the best part of the film was still screening?

There was only a single light on in Baekhyun’s house and that was in the living room, but that was enough for Chanyeol to know that Baekhyun was home.

It was also how he knew that Baekhyun had been ignoring his calls.

Chanyeol slammed the taxi door and marched up to the door with heavy footfall, pressing the bell once while he stood in waiting. There were two sets of chimes echoing throughout the house before silence erupted once again. And then nothing.

Chanyeol hastily pressed on the bell again, pursing his lips angrily. Bells sang away in Baekhyun’s house but there was no movement inside to suggest that Baekhyun was making to get the door. As he stood with his hands in a fist, Chanyeol could picture Baekhyun lying bonelessly on his sofa with a cup of alcohol loosely cupped by delicate fingers. Bleak eyes gazing out of the window into the calm body of cerulean water in his pool, illuminated by the light from the house that splattered itself on the ground outside, on the chairs outside.

He rang the doorbell again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And when it became insufficient, Chanyeol started punching against the doorbell while pounding his fists against the thick wooden door.

“Byun Baekhyun!” Chanyeol shouted, “Byun Baekhyun! Open this door! Open this fucking door right—”

The door swung open quietly, and Chanyeol almost stumbled as his hand hit the air and made an arch that threw off his balance. His arms flailed for a second before he looked up slowly, staring back at cold, detached eyes dripping with displeasure. It was in those eyes that Chanyeol remembered how Baekhyun looked at him all those months ago. Condescending words paired with patronising glares.

Baekhyun had never considered him his equal. Baekhyun had always looked down on Chanyeol.

What were those days that they spent together, then? What did they mean, if they weren’t love? Did Baekhyun never feel even an ounce of affection for Chanyeol at all?

Anger flared in Chanyeol's chest. He brushed past Baekhyun angrily and stormed into the warm house. “You’re been ignoring me.” he accused, “You’ve been avoiding me.”

“Hello to you, too.” Baekhyun said, closing the door softly. He leaned a shoulder against the door and folded his arms across his chest.

“Why’re you avoiding me?”

“Why do you think that I’m avoiding you?”

“You haven’t been answering my calls or messages. And— and you’ve stopped hanging out with me.”

“What do you think this is, then?”

“I had to come here, Baekhyun!” Chanyeol screamed, throwing his arms down. “I had to bang your fucking door down just to get to you! Why the fuck do you think I’m here?!”

“Because you’re obsessed,” Baekhyun commented, “You can’t let go.”

“And whose fucking fault is that, huh?! You were avoiding me! You left me hanging without any explanation!”

“I wasn’t avoiding you.” Baekhyun rested his head against the door and crossed his legs at the ankles. “Avoiding implies that the person avoiding is scared and sneaking around. I’m not.”

“Yeah, the fuck you’re not. Then just what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Leaving.” Baekhyun unfolded himself, walking leisurely towards the bar opposite Chanyeol where an opened bottle of whiskey stood next to a short glass with a half-melted block of ice inside. Baekhyun filled the glass to a third before swinging back to watch Chanyeol, sipping casually on the drink. He raised an amused brow, gesturing to Chanyeol with the hand holding the glass. Dark brown swished in his glass. “Didn’t you get the message?”

“Stop fucking around, Baekhyun.” Chanyeol scoffed, “You’re leaving? When did we decide on that?”

“But who asked you?” Baekhyun said. He took another sip. “We were groupmates. Not fuck buddies, not friends, not _anything_. Why would I care about your opinion?”

“Not anything? Not anything?!” Chanyeol echoed incredulously, “Don’t lie to me— no, don’t lie to yourself. You know that we weren’t ‘not anything’.” Chanyeol made air quotes with his fingers, spitting the words viciously at Baekhyun who took it impassively.

“What did you think that we were?”

“I don’t know— but I know that we were—” Chanyeol’s hands moved wildly near his face. “We were something!”

“ _‘We were something’!_ ” Baekhyun laughed, leaning towards the bar as he bowed his head. “When did we decide on that?”

“Then— then why were you..” Chanyeol looked down. His heart was sinking as he bit on the insides of his cheeks. “Why did you spend all that time with me? Why did you act like you cared? You— you cared when I was upset.” he was beginning to feel like it was a lost cause, but he had to reiterate it again— not for Baekhyun, but for himself. “You cared for me.”

“Haven’t I told you already?” Baekhyun sobered up. The cheer left his face as he looked back at Chanyeol, resting his elbow against the back of a high chair. “It was all entertainment.”

How deep was his heart going to sink? How deep _could_ it sink? “You’re lying.”

“No. You’re just realising how delusional you are.”

It was difficult to stand in front of the person he held onto so tightly and watch them wash their hands off him. It was difficult to see the disinterest and unmoved expression reflected so clearly in those dark eyes when he felt like pins and needles were driving themselves through his bloodstream, taking a stab at the softest parts of himself he didn’t know existed until now.

Chanyeol hung his head. “Is that it? That’s all you’re going to say?”

Baekhyun emptied his glass. “What else is there to say?”

His legs wanted to give way. His eyes were starting to prickle with tears. His throat had gone dry despite how much he swallowed.

Was this it?

Was this how he was going to lose Baekhyun? Or had he already lost him?

_“You’re going to lose him, you know.”_

Chanyeol’s body stiffened in shock as the words came back to him in soft echoes.

_“You’re going to lose him if you don’t do something.”_

_Suddenly, Chanyeol was back in that same day with the door creaking behind him as a group of students laughed on their way into the canteen. The wind blew lightly against him and carried stray orange leaves along with it, ushering them with urgency to an unnamed destination._

_Baekhyun leaned forward with an arm on the table and his half-burnt cigarette between his fingers, looking at Chanyeol with disapproval._

_“And what would you do if you lost him too?”_

_Chanyeol looked down at his feet with shame clotting in his mouth. “Maybe I already have.”_

_Baekhyun rolled his cigarette between his fingers emotionlessly, staring fixedly at the burning tip. “Then you would deserve it.”_

_“Huh?”_

_“A little scolding got you feeling all down and depressed?” Baekhyun barked out a cruel laugh, turning to the side. “Grow up, Chanyeol. This is why he’s abandoning you.”_

_“I don’t understand—”_

_“He says all you are to him is entertainment?” Baekhyun scoffed. His steely eyes drifted back to meet Chanyeol’s while he dropped his smile. “Fuck that.” Baekhyun flicked his wrist, throwing his cigarette to the side. “You know why he’s doing this. You know the real reason why he’s running away, and you’re gonna accept that he’s gotten bored of you?”_

_“It could still be true that—”_

_“Then you deserve it, Chanyeol. You’ll deserve being left behind by everyone.”_

_“And what am I supposed to do about it, huh?!” Chanyeol yelled, clenching his fists. “Do you want me to scream at him?! Do you want me to hurt him?! What do you want me to do about it?!”_

_Baekhyun tilted his head to the side, pondering. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”_

_“Great! Because—”_

_“But I know you want to.”_

_Chanyeol closed his mouth in shock. He blinked, confused. “What?”_

_“I know what you want, and I know that you’ve been wanting to do this for a long time.” Baekhyun picked up the cup of coffee without breaking eye contact. “You’ve always hated that smug look on his face. You’ve always wanted to feel his skin split under your hand.” Baekhyun took a slow sip with a pleased smile etched into his face. “Now’s your chance.”_

_A moment of silence passed. Chanyeol looked at Baekhyun with quiet acceptance in his eyes. “There’s no coming back from this.”_

_“There was never any coming back from any of this,” Baekhyun chuckled, “Why’re you only stopping now?”_

_“It feels different.”_

_“It will be,” Baekhyun said, looking into his cup. “if you actually do something about it.”_

_“What am I supposed to do?” Chanyeol asked miserably, “What do I say?”_

_“You already know what you want to do and say.” Baekhyun leaned back and threw one leg over the other. “But since you’re in such a dilemma, I’ll help you.”_

_“You will?” Chanyeol glanced up hopefully. Baekhyun nodded._

_“I will.” Baekhyun took another sip of coffee, finishing the drink in one go. Chanyeol waited wordlessly as Baekhyun crushed the empty cup in one hand, smiling fondly at Chanyeol. “You start by saying—”_

“You son of a bitch,” Chanyeol murmured. His head still hung and his arms were still limp by his sides, but the words he uttered were full of venom. Baekhyun froze briefly with his hand on the bottle of whiskey, pouring out the last bit of whiskey into the glass when he turned around with an affronted sneer.

“Excuse me?”

“I said.” Chanyeol looked up from under his messy bangs. His jaw worked for a second. “You no good son of a bitch.” Baekhyun’s expression started falling the moment he realised what Chanyeol was talking about, which gave Chanyeol the confidence to press further. He looked up fully now and took a step towards Baekhyun. “That’s what you are, aren’t you? The shameful son of a whore who couldn’t bear to stay.”

Baekhyun’s face went blank immediately. His fingers on the glass slipped as he stared back at Chanyeol with a perfectly guarded look. His relaxed jaw squared itself as his teeth locked against each other, all the while looking at Chanyeol with stillness paralysing his face.

“Leave,” Baekhyun hissed through gritted teeth. “Now.”

Yet, Chanyeol took another step closer. “Funny, isn’t it? You’ll only stay with people who entertain you. You know what I wonder? I wonder if you got that from your mother. And _then_ I wonder where your mother is.” another step, another pause. “Oh, maybe I do know.” he giggled to himself, clutching onto his stomach as his giggles evolved into a hearty laughter that shook his whole body. His laughter resounded in the vast space, interrupting the heavy silence that weighed heavily over their heads. The more he laughed, the funnier it became to him. The irony of the situation became clear to Chanyeol, and the clearer it became, the more pathetic Baekhyun looked.

Fucking pathetic.

Eventually, his laughter subsided. A few more giggles escaped him as he calmed down and stood up straight, pressing a hand to his chest. “I think I do know where your mother is, actually.” Chanyeol laughed softly, “She’s probably finding entertainment in some other men’s beds, isn’t she? You weren’t enough for her to stay.”

“I’m going to give you one last chance before I call the police on you,” Baekhyun said stiffly, “Leave.”

“Call the police on me? Don’t make me laugh.” Chanyeol said, taking yet another step closer to Baekhyun. “Yeah, go ahead, call the police. I’m sure your father would be very happy to hear about it.”

Baekhyun’s hand slid across the counter, wrapping itself around the glass cup slowly.

“Didn’t your father pay you to stay out of his life, anyway? Makes you wonder what he’ll think, won’t he?” Chanyeol chuckled, “His delinquent son calling the cops. It’s laughable.”

Baekhyun’s fingers tightened around the glass. Chanyeol stepped forward, oblivious to Baekhyun’s small movements.

“Just what do you hope to achieve by calling the cops, hmm? Do you think your absent father’s going to come rushing to you out of concern? Do you think he’s going to care that his son was even in trouble?”

Baekhyun’s knuckles went white from the force of his grip.

“You know something, Baekhyun? I think he’d be glad. He might even thank me if he no longer had to deal with this mistake he couldn’t correct himself.” Chanyeol snickered, covering his mouth as his eyes turned into half-moons.

Baekhyun’s nostrils flared.

“I think he’d actually be glad if you died.”

It happened in a flash, too quick for Chanyeol to catch everything that happened. One moment he was inching closer to Baekhyun with waves of laughter shaking his body, the next moment his cheek was punched by something that flew across the room from Baekhyun’s hand. For a split second, there was a brown arch of liquid that sparkled in the orange light, frozen in time as it reached upwards with watery fingers, repenting for all its sins before it fell backwards, splattering across white marble with a muffled cry.

At the same time, a sickening _thump_ thundered in Chanyeol’s ears as the object hit his face, forcing his head to the side as it continued its trajectory downwards. As the object bounced off his face and collided into the floor a few metres away, it shattered at the force of the impact with a loud crash that reverberated in the silence that exploded between them.

Chanyeol brought his trembling fingers up, grazing the spot where the glass hit him. His cheekbones were already starting to swell. Even the slightest brush against his fragile skin felt like a razor scraping against bone. He flinched as the pain travelled up his face, travelled into his eye, into his spine, into his fingers that were jolted by a bolt of electric pain. His body pulsed, squeezed tight as tremours worked through his nerves. Sucking in a deep breath, Chanyeol pulled his hand away. His hand hovered over the reddening patch on skin, blooming like a bloodstain on his face.

“You hit me,” Chanyeol said with an air of disbelief, “You actually hit me, you son of a bitch.”

“Get out,” Baekhyun spat in a tight voice, “Get the fuck out of here.”

“You actually fucking hit me.”

“Get out!” Baekhyun bellowed. Veins along his neck stood out prominently as he yelled. “ _Get out!_ ”

Chanyeol cupped his face gently as he looked at Baekhyun. Baekhyun, whose face was flushing with rage. Baekhyun, whose eyebrows were drawn together in a fierce line. Baekhyun, whose body was taut with fury.

Chanyeol had never seen Baekhyun so angry before. Nothing could compare to the animosity radiating from him. If Chanyeol had been stunned into silence by Baekhyun’s temporary outburst in the car, Chanyeol should have been fleeing by now.

Yet, as he held Baekhyun’s hateful glare, he felt a chill spread through his own body. For the first time, Chanyeol understood Baekhyun’s frustration with him for the past few months. As he stood there with his hand against bruising skin, he was possessed by sudden clarity. He saw himself in Baekhyun, and he hated it.

Just who the fuck did Baekhyun think he was, anyway? Looking at him like _Chanyeol_ was the scum, looking at him like he wished Chanyeol was dead.

Chanyeol’s mouth twitched. He lowered his gaze as he cradled his cheek. “Do you know what I hate about you, Baekhyun?”

If Baekhyun had been expecting anything, Chanyeol’s words were not it. Baekhyun blinked in surprise and just like that, the moment had been broken.

“What?” Baekhyun asked, not believing the words that Chanyeol was spitting back at him. Chanyeol let his gaze drift back to Baekhyun.

“You’re such a fucking hypocrite.” Chanyeol said. Every word was tensed and filled with anger that simmered just beneath the surface, waiting to explode. “You think that you don’t need anyone. You act like you’re above everyone. But you crave love and attention from those you put down.”

Baekhyun exhaled, lowering his head to glare at Chanyeol harder.

“You bait people into caring for you and as soon as they do, you don’t want it anymore. You can’t handle it. You don’t know how to handle love that isn’t tainted with rejection.”

Baekhyun set his jaw, inhaling deeply.

“The only type of love you’ve ever known is a love shrouded in darkness. You don’t want to be loved, Baekhyun. You want someone to hate you. You want someone to hate you the same way that your own parents do, you want someone to destroy you, because _that’s the only type of affection you know!_ ” Chanyeol roared, swinging his hands. He took a few angry steps forwards, stepping through the spilt alcohol, closing the distance between them. With their close proximity, Chanyeol could see the way his vitriol reflected back at him in Baekhyun’s eyes. He could see Baekhyun seething silently, waiting for his time to strike back.

And it made Chanyeol sick.

He hated the scorn on Baekhyun’s face. He hated that Baekhyun wasn’t collapsing under the weight of his vitriol. He hated that Baekhyun continued holding his ground, he hated every fucking thing about Baekhyun in that moment.

And it made Chanyeol sick with resentment.

“You’re fucking pathetic, Baekhyun!” Chanyeol screamed into Baekhyun’s face. “You’re dishonest, you’re a hypocrite! You’re pathetic!”

Silence crept in between them in the time it took for Baekhyun to school his features into an indecipherable mask and look back at Chanyeol calmly.

“And what does that make you, then?” Baekhyun asked quietly, “You can’t let go of me even when I’m done with you. So what does that say about you?”

Chanyeol stiffened. His face crumpled slightly as he took a step back, confused.

“What does that—”

“You keep coming back to me even though you hate the way I talk down to you. You find me for comfort when you know it leaves you feeling worse about yourself. You left your friends for me when I left you to die.” Baekhyun said coolly, “So what does that say about you?”

Chanyeol shook his head uneasily.

“It doesn’t—”

“Why can’t you let me go, Chanyeol?” Baekhyun asked, “Are you that desperate for even a morsel of attention? Do you crave someone’s reassurance so much that you’re willing to overlook all the other things you hate about me?”

“I—”

“You know who the biggest hypocrite in the room is? Look in the mirror.” Baekhyun scoffed, “You’ve lost your friends. You’ve lost me. You’re all alone.”

You’ve lost your friends.

You’ve lost me.

You’re all alone.

You’re all alone.

You’re all alone. You’re all alone. You’re all alone. You’re all alone you’re all alone you’re all alone you’re allalone you’reallalone you’reallaloneyou’reallaloneyou’reallaloneyou’re—

_“You’re all alone.”_

_Smoke drifted into Chanyeol’s face. He shook it off, waving a hand in front of his face. He looked at Baekhyun, staring ahead at the campus greenery with a fresh cigarette between his lips. Baekhyun pulled it out slowly, throwing his head back as he closed his eyes._

_“You already knew this, though. You don’t even have god.”_

_“I know.”_

_“Are you going to let him get away with this? He hurt you, Chanyeol.” Baekhyun tapped the butt of the cigarette against the table. “Your face is pounding.”_

_“I know.”_

_“You already knew that you can’t let go of him.”_

_“I know.” Chanyeol said with impatience seeping into his tone. Baekhyun glanced up, turning his body slightly._

_“Are you going to let him get away with this?” Baekhyun asked, “He will, you know.”_

_“I_ know. _”_

_“So what are you going to do about it?”_

_“I—”_

Chanyeol clenched his hands into tight fists, inhaling deeply, inhaling sharply. His muscles tensed, ready to pounce. His hands were shaking with rage, his vision tunnelled, his heart was drumming frantically—

“And you know something, Chanyeol?” Baekhyun asked with an amused smile, “I think that everyone would be very happy if you died, too—”

_“What are you going to do about it?!”_

Chanyeol's arm shot out immediately. His palm struck Baekhyun’s face in a sharp slap that echoed in the room. Baekhyun’s head was pushed to the side roughly while his eyes closed shut, hands flailing everywhere in a bid to keep his balance. His arm swept across the bar counter, dragging the empty glass bottle down with them as the force of Chanyeol’s slap sent them both tumbling down to the cold floor.

As the bottle hit the ground and shattered into a million pieces, they bounced across the floor like raindrops on a rainy night. Crystals glimmered in Chanyeol’s peripheral as he fell on top of Baekhyun’s body, limbs entangled with each other’s and glass shards flying across exposed skin. They zinged as they grazed his arms and fingers before they fell onto the floor around them like rose petals on a bed of love.

With pain shooting up his arm, Chanyeol dragged his legs over Baekhyun, straddling him. His heart beat angrily against his ribcage, his pulse rang in his ears like a never ending signal. All he could think about was the way that Baekhyun moaned under him in pain as glass shards dug into his body. All he could feel was Baekhyun’s panic-stricken heartbeat that rivalled his own. All he could hear were vengeful whispers that were increasing in intensity.

_“What are you going to do about it?”_

Chanyeol's hand struck Baekhyun’s face again. Another slap resounded in the room, momentarily drowning out the overwhelming feeling clamping his chest.

_“What are you going to do about it?”_

Chanyeol’s hand curled into a fist in mid-air before he struck Baekhyun again. This time, there was a crack the second his hand collided with Baekhyun’s nose. Blood splattered everywhere as Baekhyun cried out in pain, hand wrapping around Chanyeol’s wrist without any strength in them. As Baekhyun’s fingers circled his wrists, Chanyeol felt his anger flare up again. That Baekhyun was trying to pull away, that Baekhyun was trying to _run away again._

How dare he?

Chanyeol’s fist smashed into Baekhyun’s temple. Baekhyun’s head snapped to the side. A soft groan escaped from him as Chanyeol adjusted himself on top of Baekhyun, getting a better position to make Baekhyun look at him.

And then his hand struck Baekhyun again. That was for throwing the glass cup at him. And then again for the time at the frozen lake. And then again for the scare in the car.

A memory resurfaced every time his fists smashed into Baekhyun’s face. A memory of a time when he wanted to do this, a memory of a time he suppressed his urge to lash out and wipe the smug look out of Baekhyun’s eyes.

And then again. And then again.

This was for every time that he held his anger in, this was for every time his anger simmered inside him. This was for every fucking time that Baekhyun looked at him like he was dispensable, this was for every single fucking time that Baekhyun thought that Chanyeol was just another thing to kill time.

Chanyeol wasn’t just any fucking thing, and he would make sure that Baekhyun knew it. He would make sure that Baekhyun learnt it, he would engrave it in Baekhyun’s mind. He would engrave it in his skin, in his bones, and he would make sure that Baekhyun would never make the same mistake ever again.

And here, Baekhyun thought that he was the one in the driver’s seat. Baekhyun always thought that the ball was in his court, he thought that Chanyeol was going to _listen._ And now, he would learn how wrong he was. Oh, Baekhyun was going to learn how wrong he was. He was going to learn how wrong he was he was was going to learn how wrong he was he was was going to learn how wrong hewas going tolearnhow wrong he waslearnhow wronghewas howwronghewas howwronghewashowwronghewas _howwronghewas—_

Chanyeol was going to show Baekhyun what it meant to be in control of your fate.

He was going to wipe that smile out of Baekhyun forever.

_“What are you going to do about it?”_

Chanyeol didn’t feel the rest of it. Everything was drowned out by the sharp ringing in his ears. All he could see were the specks of red that flew everytime Baekhyun coughed, all he could feel were the droplets of blood that dripped down his hand, all he could think of was the bubbling laughter that rose up his throat. His vision blurred out everything that wasn’t Baekhyun.

Oh, Baekhyun.

Baekhyun, with a deep cut on the bridge of his nose. Baekhyun, with a trail of red snaking down from his hairline. Baekhyun, with one side of his lips busted and his cheeks decorated with uneven lines, with red spots spreading, luminescent under Chanyeol’s touch. Baekhyun, suppressing a quiet whimper as Chanyeol’s fist struck his teeth, his cheeks, his eyes.

Again and again and again and againand again and againandagainandagain.

He couldn’t help it.

Baekhyun was beginning to look beautiful. Chanyeol was starting to see the man he saw all those months ago, the man who carved a spot in his heart and never left.

Still, it wasn’t enough. Not even close. Because the lesson wasn’t over, and Chanyeol wasn’t done. He was going to show Baekhyun what it really meant to be the maker of your own destiny. Except now, Chanyeol wasn’t just the maker of his destiny. No. No, no, no, no no no no no no no—

He was the maker of Baekhyun’s destiny as well, wasn’t he?

And he was going to prove that to Baekhyun. He was going to make sure that Baekhyun knew his fucking place in the world: next to Chanyeol, the pliant, submissive boy that would always resist. Oh, he would, wouldn’t he? Oh, he would.

_“You’re going to lose him, you know.”_

He would try to run.

And as Chanyeol pulled away, he spotted something at the corner of his eye, just above Baekhyun’s head.

It was the glass bottle that had been shattered in half.

Chanyeol reached for the bottle with shaking hands drenched in red. His fingers twitched in pain, in excitement, in anticipation of what was to come.

_“You’re going to lose him if you don’t do something.”_

Chanyeol grabbed the neck of the bottle, dragging it across spots of red peppered across the floor. He wrapped his injured hand around the neck tightly and raised it over his head, grabbing Baekhyun’s shirt with his other hand. He pulled Baekhyun up violently. Baekhyun’s head snapped back and lolled uselessly as his eyes were swollen shut with blood crawling down his nose and mouth.

_“Do you understand what you have to do now?”_

As if sensing Chanyeol’s intentions, Baekhyun forced an eye open. In that moment, Baekhyun looked as he did in the bathtub. Broken, vulnerable and resigned.

There it was: the man that Chanyeol remembered, the person who finally came back to the vacancy in his heart. And then, right when Baekhyun’s despairing gaze met Chanyeol’s, Chanyeol felt love resurface from the depths of his hatred.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t do it.” Chanyeol’s hand hung dangerously over them. His words were monotonous and as aloof as the look on his face. “Give me one fucking reason.”

“I can’t do that,” Baekhyun whispered. His voice was rough and lifeless, breaking in the middle of his sentence. “You have the right to do it.”

_“Do you understand what you have to do now?”_

That was right.

That was right. Chanyeol was the person who was in charge. Chanyeol was the one calling the shots. Chanyeol would be the one to decide how Baekhyun lived— _if_ he did.

Chanyeol lifted his hand higher, holding his breath as he clenched his hand around the bottle as tightly as he could. Wordlessly, Baekhyun cracked out a docile smile as he kept his eyes on Chanyeol. There was nothing else in his expression except a subdued acquiescence of the fate Chanyeol would bestow upon him. And for a moment, for an extremely brief moment, Chanyeol thought he saw something glisten in those dark eyes.

He thought it was love he saw.

Chanyeol brought his arm down, throwing the bottle onto the floor next to them. Glass shards flew around as the top half shattered completely. As they grazed Chanyeol’s face and littered all over the floor, Chanyeol could imagine that they were Baekhyun’s tears, falling across the stained floor. For all the times that he did Chanyeol wrong, for all the times that he would repent for his sins.

Chanyeol let go of Baekhyun’s shirt. Baekhyun fell back onto the floor with a pained groan, closing his eyes as glass dug into his back. He looked down at the man under him again and examined every cut on his face, every bruise that was coming to life under broken skin.

Chanyeol thought that in that moment, between the fondness that swelled in his chest and the clarity of cataloging Baekhyun’s injuries, that Baekhyun’s mortality was the most beautiful feature he possessed, and Chanyeol found himself washed over by a peculiar love for the broken man in front of him.

_I love you when you’re mine. I love you when you want to run but can’t._

With bleeding hands, Chanyeol cupped Baekhyun’s battered and bruised cheeks. He rubbed his thumbs across Baekhyun’s bumpy cheeks, still oozing red streaks from cuts and broken skin, and left red smears across a canvas of purple blooming under wan skin.

“We are all entitled to our own delusions, aren’t we?” Chanyeol asked quietly. His thumb ghosted along the swelling curve of Baekhyun’s closed eyelids, down to the crooked shape of his nose, and he held his breath in wonder. “Do you want to know what yours is?”

Baekhyun made a wounded noise at the back of his throat. He opened his eyes with difficulty, glistening with unshed tears of pain. Although he said nothing, his eyes followed the minute movements of Chanyeol’s eyes, trailing along the masterpiece he made of Baekhyun’s face.

“You think that you’re above love,” Chanyeol whispered with affection. His thumb ran across a cut along Baekhyun’s chin and pressed in slowly, watching Baekhyun flinch under him, hearing his sharp intake of breath. “But all you really want is love, Baekhyun. And all you’ve been trying to do all along is to test people. You want to see who’s dedicated enough to hold on to you even when you’re a fucked up mess that isn’t worth anything.”

Baekhyun stared back, eyes brimming with tears but unwilling to shed any for Chanyeol. Chanyeol smiled back with tenderness and love. He tilted Baekhyun’s chin, forcing Baekhyun to look at him.

“And I love you when you’re hurt, and all you have is me.” Chanyeol said, “Is that sincere enough for you?” Chanyeol’s fingers dug into Baekhyun’s jaw. His fingernails sank into Baekhyun’s skin, trying to pierce into it. “Is that _sincere_ enough for you?”

Baekhyun wilted under him, closing his eyes as a tear ran down the red smears, clearing a clean track down his cheek.

“I love you, I really do.” Chanyeol said softly, “And I know that you love me too.”

A small, pained breath of laughter escaped from Baekhyun’s split and bloodied lips. As he spoke, Chanyeol could see the blood along Baekhyun’s teeth, gathering around his swollen gums. “Is that so?”

Still, as pathetic and ugly as Baekhyun looked in that moment, Chanyeol felt a lovely peace spread throughout his body. Immediately, he relaxed and his smile burst across his face as he beamed at Baekhyun, eyes turning up into crescents.

“Yes, it is. You love me.” Chanyeol said, completely delighted, “I see it in your eyes. You love me.”

Baekhyun’s Adam's apple bobbed slowly before he coughed. Droplets of blood flew from his lips, landing on Chanyeol’s hand. It was only when Chanyeol stared at the specks of dark red on his hand, along with his bruised knuckles and bleeding cuts, that Chanyeol realised that he did this to Baekhyun.

_“I know you’re not going to hurt me, okay? I trust you.”_

He was the one who put Baekhyun in this state. After all that time of being taunted and tolerating all of Baekhyun’s jibes, Chanyeol had finally stood up for himself.

He was living on borrowed time and he had never felt more alive.

Laughter started to bubble from the depths of his soul. Chanyeol dropped Baekhyun’s head, letting it fall back onto the cold floor stained with red as he covered his mouth with one hand. Gracelessly, he pushed himself off Baekhyun, stumbling slightly as he struggled to get steady footing again. Every part of his body hurt. All he could feel was pain shooting everywhere inside his body. He winced as he leaned too hard on one side, putting pressure on his newly-sprained ankle.

Still, he tottered out of Baekhyun’s house, breathing harshly as the cool wind advised him against leaving. His legs felt clumsy as they took one step at a time. One step, and then another, and then another.

And then, Chanyeol broke into a run.

He ran even when his body ached and protested, he ran even when his knees gave out and threw him against asphalt one too many times. But still, he ran.

He ran, and he ran.

And as he ran, the laughter that bubbled up finally left his lips. It started with a small giggle, something so similar to a hiccup that Chanyeol’s gait faltered. Then, it grew in force, wrecking his body in sobs as he doubled over in laughter. It came out strangled and as mangled as the man he left behind, bleeding on the floor. Waves of pained sobs that eventually morphed into manic laughter.

Baekhyun was right. Baekhyun had been right from the start.

Chanyeol was never a happy man. He was never happy when he had everything, when he was considered a good person. He had been lying to himself that he was happy with where he was, with who he was pretending to be. It was only after he had lost everything that he finally knew what peace truly felt like. He had to lose everything in order to be happy, and he had never been as happy as he was in his life than he was now.

He finally felt truly alive. He was alive in a world that was dying, and now that he had done everything he thought he once thought he could never, he was truly free.

No one would ever tell him what to do or say anymore. Now that he had lost everything, he had found himself.

Happiness smelt like iron and felt like pain throbbing in his knuckles. Happiness sounded like the hysterical, broken laughter falling from his lips and looked like blood coagulating along Baekhyun’s face.

Now that he had lost everything, he had gained so much more. He was alive in ways that no one could imagine, and he was alive in a world that was festering.

And as he stumbled in his run, and as waves of laughter shook his shoulders, tears began to streak down his face like shooting stars. And even then, he ran.

Stars lined his way, shining down at him in greeting like long lost friends. The crisp air felt good, it rejuvenated him and gave him the strength he needed to take the next step forward. Chanyeol wasn’t sure when he lost track of where he was, he wasn’t sure when the night stopped being quiet. All he could hear were the hiccups from his laughter, coming out in raspy gasps accompanied by tears rolling down his face, leaving clean tracks on his otherwise bloodied face.

And still, he ran.

_And I will keep you, because you belong to me, just as I belong to you._

The room was collapsing in a heap of smoke. Fire blazed throughout the theatre, illuminating the corners unevenly and elongating shadows with unsteady focus.

Still, Chanyeol sat in his seat. His fingers dug into the cushions of the armrests as the film played on, as even as the film reel was starting to stutter towards the end. Despite everything happening around him, despite the increasingly flawed additions to the film, Chanyeol believed that it was the most perfect thing that he had ever seen.

Even if he died here, it would be the most perfect way to go. With the film still playing and the sound system screaming into his ears.

Everything was perfect.

The city lights twinkled under the starry night, each directly mirroring the other. The only difference between them was that the stars above shined in white light, looking like angels waving from heaven, and the city lights waved over at them in a mix of yellow and orange and red lights, looking like debased stars that belonged in hell.

With the sea of gleaming lights in front of them, Chanyeol turned his head and observed the way that Baekhyun’s cheeks hollowed as he took a long drag from his cigarette. The windows on both sides of the car were winded down fully, and yet the air wasn’t as cold as it was a few months ago. Spring was slowly transitioning to summer, and although Chanyeol thought it was a pity that they wouldn’t be skating on the thinly frozen lake for another few months, he thought that the green colouring the trees along the way looked beautiful as well.

Baekhyun picked the cigarette out of his mouth and blew out smoke in a long, almost uninterrupted ribbon that found its way out of the window naturally. He opened his eyes slowly and looked over at Chanyeol with his usual uninterested expression.

As a passing cloud drifted, the moonlight seeped into the car sluggishly, falling onto Baekhyun’s face like a dimmed spotlight. In the quiet of the night and the short distance between them, Chanyeol could see the fresh bruise blossoming on Baekhyun’s cheek.

This brought an affectionate smile to his face.

Chanyeol brought a hand up to cup Baekhyun’s face, ghosting his thumb across Baekhyun’s cheekbones and remembered how it swelled months ago, painted in varying shades of purple and red. Warmth bloomed in his chest at the memory, and his smile widened as he thought how soon he would see it again.

“I love you,” Chanyeol said. Baekhyun looked at him in silence, bringing the cigarette to his lips again. He said nothing to Chanyeol, opting to exhale wordlessly. But Chanyeol didn’t need Baekhyun’s verbal affirmation of love— he could see it clearly in Baekhyun’s eyes, in the minute curve of his healing lips.

A trail of grey danced between them before fading out of the window into the coal-coloured sky.

_When I whisper love into your ears_  
_I want your once indifferent eyes  
_ _To tell me you love me too_

**Author's Note:**

> A few months ago, I finally googled the translation for one of my favourite songs and I was hit with a vague idea that I eventually wrote. From the prompts, I had a clear image of Baekhyun and Chanyeol sitting in a car at night, on a place overlooking the city with its lights where one of them would say “I love you” with indifference in his eyes. This idea and the desire to know their story possessed me until I finally wrote it and somehow it led to this. Who knows if I succeeded but it was fun to write anyway.
> 
> Thank you C for helping me with the difficult scenes and for being so excited about the idea, your excitement was infectious. Thank you S for being the such a great pillar of support for me throughout this fic journey, from the first time I was spamming you with ideas to the end. The list of things you’ve both helped me with is too long so I’ll just say that I couldn’t have finished it without the immense and unwavering support you’ve given me. And finally, thank you mods for your hard work in organising this round, without which none of this would have been possible. :")


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